Out
by Empathist
Summary: Beginning with Brendan's release from prison in November 2011, this story covers the missing three weeks before he returned to Hollyoaks village. There are flashbacks to other characters, including Ste, and to events in Brendan's past.
1. Chapter 1

Brendan Brady knew that this particular ordeal was coming to an end. His solicitor had told him that the murder charges had officially been dropped by the police, and the hearing today in his absence was just a formality. It was taking long enough though, and Brendan wouldn't believe it until he was outside those gates and away from this place.

He stayed in his cell, didn't go for breakfast; couldn't face the food or the company or the stares. Every bone in him ached from the latest battering, on top of the one before and the one before that. His knuckles were sore too though: the fuckers hadn't had it all their own way.

This time it had happened after he went back to his cell after Cheryl's last visit. It was the usual suspects, a pair of brain dead thugs who'd been told what to do and say. They were efficient, Brendan had to give them that. Their routine was to grab him from behind and twist his arms up behind his back, then one of them would hold him like that and the other one would punch him. One punch, hard in the stomach, which made him reflexively double over – that's what a blow to the gut made you do, he'd found that out when his dad did it to him when he was a kid, and he'd seen it too when he'd dished it out himself – and then as he bent forward, a fist would meet his face, maybe once, maybe twice.

The latest time, it had been more of a fight. Brendan had landed a few punches before they overpowered him, and kicked one of them in the balls. They still got him, though: his ribs took a beating and his bruised face was bruised some more, and the cut below his eye was opened up again. _Watch that blood,_ one of them said to the other, _might catch something. _Then as they left him on the floor of his cell, the other one said to Brendan, _Fucking faggot._

Today though, he knew he was getting out.

He shut his eyes, but sleep wasn't a possibility, not in the daytime. It wasn't just the noise, it was the need to stay alert when his cell door was unlocked and anyone could walk in and anything could happen. At night when he was shut in, if he could fight the panic at being caged, he could allow himself to sleep. There was always noise: as soon as the lights went out, lads who had lost the plot would rail at the world or cry for their mothers, but he'd learnt to tune it out, like when the church bells rang when he was a boy. He'd stopped hearing the clamour.

When it came, sleep wasn't always a refuge. There were the pictures he saw in his head, night after night, before he dropped off. And there were nightmares. And sometimes there were dreams, and when he woke from them, reality hit him in the centre of his chest, the pain of loss renewed each day.

There was a knock on the open door. Brendan knew who it was before he opened his eyes: Brian, just about the only one of the wardens who bothered with courtesy.

"Got some news for you, Brendan. Your solicitor rang from the court, the judge directed that you should be released immediately." Brian made an effort to look into Brendan's eyes without flinching at the state of his face. "Thought you'd like to know right away now."

"So that's it then, yeah?" Brendan stood, and felt momentarily dizzy as if he'd just stepped off a spinning roundabout. "What happens next?"

"More waiting, sorry to say. Your solicitor's on his way with the paperwork. Once that's here, we'll come and get you, and get you signed out."

"That take long usually?"

"Depends how many releases and transfers we've got." Brian saw Brendan nod and seem to shrink a little. "I'll try and find out for you, son. Just stay in your cell, try and keep out of trouble till I get back, alright?"

Brendan sat back down on his bed. He had expected that there would be something at the last minute, some new excuse for them to keep holding him. They'd had Silas Blissett in custody for days, and nothing had happened. It seemed like the system was dragging its feet, and Brendan knew he hadn't helped himself by trashing his cell and antagonising the people who held the cards. That was a mistake: he should have kept his head, and it was a lesson learned. He would play a smarter game on the outside.

:::::::

Brian came back in less than half an hour. Brendan's solicitor had arrived from the court, and suddenly there was a switch from torpor to urgency.

"I've got you to the top of the list, Brendan." Brian handed him a grey plastic bag. "You can pack your things."

There wasn't much to pack. Brian inventoried it as Brendan gathered what there was, and they both signed the list, then another officer joined them and they left the secure wing for the administration annexe. The second officer stayed in the prisoners' section and locked its final door behind them.

Here, where there were pictures on the walls and carpet on the floor, the air tasted different.

Brendan's solicitor was waiting in what Brian called the departure lounge.

"Brendan! We got there in the end." He held out his hand, and Brendan shook it briefly.

"Anthony. We done here?"

All that was left to do was to sign for the possessions that had been taken from him when he'd arrived at the prison. Then Brendan went to the toilets and changed into the grey suit that he'd worn in court. His tie and belt were in the pockets of the jacket: suddenly he was allowed to have them, was he? Because suddenly, he wasn't going to try to make a noose of them; or if he did, Her Majesty's Prisons no longer gave a fuck because it wouldn't be on their watch.

He glanced at himself in the mirror. Shit. The cut on his right cheek was dressed with a plaster that was stained with blood, and the bruise extended around his eye socket. His left eyelid was swollen too, almost closing the eye, and the skin around it was a muddy purple. Where it wasn't bruised, his skin was pallid in contrast to the dark brown of his beard. He felt as if there were different versions of himself existing together: the broken one in the mirror, and the one who had taken off this suit two months ago, and the one who had put it on again now. His body wasn't the same, that was for sure. The shirt felt tight across his chest, the arms restrictive; the trousers were loose at the waist, and he had to tighten the belt by another notch or two. Nothing fitted him. Nothing fitted.

It was time to go.

At the gate, Brian shook his hand. There'd been something about Brendan that had made him distinct from the other inmates, Brian thought, right from the day he'd come in. Maybe it was that they were both from Ireland: they both had memories of Galway, where Brian was from and where Brendan had visited throughout his life. They'd both looked out at the Atlantic from the ragged coast, and felt nourished by it. They both understood the poetry of their country, in their hearts and in their bones. They both knew the bars of Dublin.

Everyone claimed to be innocent in this prison, but Brian had been in the game long enough to have an instinct for the ones who really were. Once, after a long conversation before lights out, Brendan had said to him, _I never killed those girls_, and Brian had believed him without a doubt.

He knew from the grapevine that Brendan was gay, and had had to ask him if that was why he was being beaten up, but he'd said no. He wouldn't grass on his attackers, of course, and Brian admired his stoicism but sensed that once Brendan was out, he would seek vengeance.

"Good luck, son," he said to Brendan as he let him out. "I won't see you again now, will I?"

"There I was thinking you liked me." Brendan attempted a smile, and discovered that it was painful.

"I mean it. Whatever you think you need to do, if you're the one that ends up back inside, you're the one that's lost."

This time Brendan nodded.

"So long."

"So long."

Brendan and his solicitor stepped outside, and the door closed behind them.

"You told my sister about me getting out, Anthony?"

"I rang her to tell her the hearing was today. Sorry, I should have let her know you were getting out this morning so she could've come to meet you: she must still think it was going to be this afternoon. Want me to give her a call, give her the good news?"

"No. Maybe I'll surprise her." Brendan knew as he said it that it wasn't true. He wasn't going home, not to Cheryl, not yet. He didn't know what he _was_ going to do – he hadn't dared plan for this day – but one thing he did know was that he needed some quiet, or else he'd never get his head straight. Besides, he couldn't let her see him in this state; Cheryl knew he was being attacked, but didn't know it had happened again, and she didn't need to know. Brendan didn't want Warren Fox to see him either, to admire the job his henchmen had done on him; he would see Warren in his own time. And the thought of people in the village looking at him and seeing a victim, and feeling pity or contempt, made him feel sick. Or maybe someone would see him and feel nothing at all. Someone.

Brendan realised that Anthony was talking to him.

"I'm parked over there. I've got some bits and pieces of yours, the stuff the police took off you when you were arrested. They released it to me on Friday when they dropped the charges."

"And I had to wait the whole fucking weekend to get out."

"Yeah, the wheels of justice and all that. Still, you're out now."

Brendan wanted to kill him.

They walked to the car and Anthony got a plastic bag out of the boot. Brendan rooted through it. His leather jacket was in there as well as the rest of the clothes he'd been wearing that day when Silas had set him up. A smaller clear plastic bag contained everything else: money, credit cards, keys; his cuff; his cross.

"Where's my phone?"

"Ah, that's still evidence, apparently. They think Silas Blissett may have got hold of it at some point."

"Great. Great." Brendan wondered grimly if the police had enjoyed reading his text messages.

"Sorry about that. Listen, can I drop you somewhere, Brendan?"

"Yeah." Brendan thought for a moment. "Liverpool. Birkenhead ferry port."

"Oh, sorry, I meant down Chester way. That's where I'm heading, back to the office."

Brendan stepped close to him.

"Two months. Two months getting my head kicked in and eating school dinners. And what have you been doing, Anthony? Cosy nights in front of the telly with the wife? See, I think you've done fuck all for me - "

"It's not as simple as - "

"Fuck all. So I'm asking nicely." Brendan straightened Anthony's tie. "A lift to the docks. Pretty please."

They both got in the car.

:::::::

As he got out of the car at the ferry port, Brendan warned his solicitor not to tell Cheryl or anyone else where he had gone. He didn't want anyone on his trail.

The next sailing was at ten o'clock at night. At the booking office, he tried to pay by credit card but his card had expired while he was inside. Then his debit card was turned down. Insufficient funds, the ticket guy told him, and it made sense because Brendan never kept much in the bank and there'd have been no money going in since before his arrest. All he could do was pay cash, and figure out some way to get hold of some money once he was in Belfast.

He paid up, and got no change from seventy quid.

Now he had a few hours to kill, and he headed in to the city centre. Last time he'd been out on the streets it had been the tail end of summer, but it was November now and cold; he stopped to swap the suit jacket for his leather one.

He bought a holdall, and transferred into it everything from the plastic bags he'd been carrying. Maybe he'd look a bit less suspicious now, although the way people stared at his battered face made him feel like a freak.

He was hungry and thirsty. He remembered a workmen's cafe where he used to go sometimes in the early hours of the morning, back when he ran the club in Liverpool. He reckoned his appearance would be less of a mismatch there than in any of the likes of Starbucks which he walked past on the way.

Brendan remembered the woman behind the counter, and maybe she recognised him, or maybe she looked at him the way she did because he was a mess. He ordered tea and a bacon sandwich, and it was the best thing he'd ever eaten, and he asked for the same again.

"Been away have you, love?" the woman asked him when she brought it to him.

She knew, didn't she? Was there a taint prison gave you that people picked up on? Brendan's instinct was to snarl at her to keep her nose out, but when he looked at her, her face was kind, and for a moment he was thrown.

"Yeah, I been away," he said. What he had to do now was find his way back.


	2. Chapter 2

When Brendan arrived back at the port to get on the overnight ferry, there were a couple of police officers hanging around, and they stopped him. The guy at the booking office must have flagged him up to them when he'd gone to buy his ticket a few hours earlier: he'd had a problem when he'd tried to pay, with one card that had expired and one that was declined. He'd had to pay cash in the end, and it wouldn't have been a problem, he guessed, if his face – bruised, cut and swollen – hadn't suggested that he was trouble.

The coppers were polite enough, the pair of them, and Brendan opted to be honest and civil in return. He knew which fights were worth fighting, and this one wasn't.

"That looks nasty." The officer indicated his face. "Been in a fight, have you?"

"I got jumped." Honesty: "In prison."

"And which prison would that be, sir?"

_Sir._ Passive-aggressive little prick.

"Longmere." Brendan kept his voice even. "Got out this morning. Police dropped the charges, so. Here."

He unzipped his bag and pulled out the paperwork his solicitor had given him from the court. Brendan watched the coppers' faces carefully as they read the list of three murder charges, all marked _Withdrawn,_ and the judge's direction at the end, _Immediate release._ They got a bit of a frisson from it, he could tell by the way their eyes flicked to him and to each other; they'd probably imagined he was just some pub brawler.

"Do you have some ID with you, sir?"

Brendan had his passport, because he'd had to show it at court when he'd had his first hearing back in September. He handed it over.

"And what's the purpose of your journey tonight?"

"Going to see my kids." This was the truth, but he'd already decided his kids were not going to see him, not if he could help it. He searched in his bag again, and found the photos that Cheryl had brought in for him on one of her visits. "My boys. It's been a while."

Somehow that seemed to do the trick. The policemen handed everything back to him, and wished him a good trip.

:::::::

There was one advantage in looking like he did, Brendan discovered on the ferry: no-one wanted to sit near him, so he was able to get three seats to himself in a quiet corner, and lie down across them. He couldn't sleep though. There was a different set of sounds than he'd become used to in prison, and the sea was rough, making the environment feel alien and unsettling.

An hour or two into the journey, a young steward stood over him and asked him to get his feet off the seats. Brendan picked up his holdall from the floor and put it on the seat, then rested his feet on top of it. The steward began to object, but Brendan stared him down and he walked away. Brendan watched him go, and took in the view: his narrow waist, the slope of his arse; the way his clipped hair brushed his shirt collar at the nape of his neck.

He'd tried not to think about sex while he was inside. For a while before then, too, if he was honest. In the prison there'd been plenty of it going on, but it was better, he'd decided, to keep his distance because everything in there had a currency – not just sex but smokes, drugs, favours, loyalties – and if you weren't careful you could find yourself in debt. A couple of times, once word had got around that he was gay, he'd had the suggestion made to him, but the fellas who asked weren't the kind he'd want to get involved with. Luckily, they took no for an answer.

There'd been one lad, though: skinny little bugger, dirty blond. Impudent. Fuck knew what he was in for, he looked like butter wouldn't melt. Everyone knew he was available, and sometimes Brendan would spot him and he'd be quieter than usual, and Brendan would guess that someone had had him and it hadn't been great for the boy. How they could do it, he didn't know; those men who were straight in the outside world but happy enough to fuck around on the inside with some kid who had nowhere to run to. Brendan never went near him. What was the point of fucking someone who didn't want you? Where was the pleasure in it?

No, it had been better to try not to think about that side of things at all. Only, he couldn't help what came into his head, insistently, night after night when the lights went out and he couldn't distract himself with books or playing cards. Him. Always him. Brendan hadn't known when he'd said those words just a few weeks before he got locked up, that he was placing a curse on himself: _Every day until I'm in my grave, you will always be in my head, Stephen._

He'd fought it, tried to think of other things. Other men, even, sometimes: the ones he'd left of his own accord, the ones who hadn't gouged out a piece of him and forced their way into the wound, and discarded whatever it was that they'd taken from him. Brendan had fought it every day and night in prison, and he fought it this night on the ferry, and eventually fell asleep.

He was woken by the announcement that they were on schedule to arrive at Belfast in half an hour at six o'clock. His back was aching and his joints were stiff from lying uncomfortably, and from the legacy of that last attack. Brendan sat up and stretched, and then made his way to the toilets and had a rudimentary wash.

Waiting with the other foot passengers to disembark, he remembered he'd had a dream. Never mind his conscious effort to suppress his thoughts – his subconscious had other ideas. It was only a fragment of it that came back to him, but it was as clear as if it was happening now: running a finger down the side of his neck, and hooking the collar of his polo shirt out of the way, and kissing the smooth curve where his neck met his shoulder; Stephen squirming because he was ticklish there, but turning towards Brendan not away, so he felt the boy's breath against his ear.

That was all that was left of the dream. That, and the taste of his skin. Even as Brendan relived it, it began to dissipate, and he caught himself fighting to retain it, and hated himself for not letting go.

He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and stepped onto the dockside.

:::::::

He'd gone to a cafe when he got off the boat, because he needed to take stock, and thought he needed breakfast too – although it turned out that he was feeling too queasy from the journey to eat anything, and just drank tea. Mug after mug of tea.

Brendan counted what was left of his cash. He had about enough for one night in a B&B, two if he could find somewhere really cheap. That had to be his priority, then, getting hold of some money. Hence his trip to a branch of the bank that owned his credit card.

The staff in the bank looked at him as if he was planning to rob the place. He'd been there waiting when they opened the doors, so he was first in line, and he kept calm and explained what he wanted. He didn't mention prison; instead he said that he'd left his credit card at home in England. They seemed to offer every obstruction they could come up with, but in the end they ordered him a new card which he would be able to collect from the branch.

"When's it gonna be here?"

"Should be three to four working days."

Today was Tuesday.

"So, could be here Thursday?" He might be able to get by until then, at a stretch.

"I'd pop in on Friday if I were you, Mr Brady, or leave it til Monday. We'll most likely have it for you by then."

Brendan didn't have the energy to argue with this nervous-looking junior with a face as smooth and shiny as his chain store suit. He was getting good at keeping calm in the face of idiots: maybe he really was a changed man. Pick the fights worth fighting.

He went outside. The street was busy now, and it had begun to rain, the drops making a hard ticking sound as they bounced off the shoulders of his leather jacket. He hadn't felt rain since September.

Brendan walked quickly to the corner, and then stopped because he didn't know where he was going. People hurried past him from all directions, some of them glancing at him, others registering him only as an object to be got around. The rain stung as it hit his face.

He could find a B&B, at least for tonight, and then work something else out tomorrow. Eileen would help, probably, if he went round there and grovelled, but he couldn't deal with her right now. He hadn't spoken to her since Declan had gone home, and had no idea if the boy had told her that he knew now that Brendan was gay. He couldn't face it, having a conversation with her with that word in it, knowing all the resentment she must have stored up from fifteen years of being made a fool of. That was how she saw it, and she wouldn't hold back, not if she thought he had screwed Declan up.

In any case, he couldn't risk his boys seeing him like this.

He tried to think, standing there in the rain, if he had a friend he could turn to, ask for a few quid to tide him over, but there was no-one. The mates he'd had in this city were business associates of the kind you didn't ask favours from, not if you were weaker than them. Then there was Peter. Lynsey had told Brendan on one of her visits that he had suddenly gone back to Belfast – something to do with a woman and a job. Brendan didn't know where he lived, and in any case he doubted he'd get much of a welcome, although there had been moments when he'd felt that in spite of everything, in some indefinable way Peter was on his side.

Sentimental crap, probably.

He couldn't expect his family to help. Eileen's lot all hated him now, if they hadn't before, and he didn't even bother considering asking his own side. Too much water under the bridge, and anyway he didn't want word of his whereabouts getting back to Cheryl.

He headed back towards the docks, knowing that there were some bed and breakfast places in that direction. Brendan knocked at the first one he came to with a "Vacancies" sign up, but it turned out that they didn't have a vacant room after all, not for a man in clothes that were soaked through and whose face, between the cuts and the bruises and the sleep-deprived eyes, had the dull pallor of a prisoner. Same at the next place, and the next.

As he walked on past a bus stop, a bus came and he recognised its number and remembered its route. He got on.

Twenty-five minutes later he was standing outside a door in between two shops. It had stopped raining, but it was colder now and Brendan's damp clothes made him shiver.

What was the point? It was midday on a Tuesday, there'd probably be no answer, but what if there was?

Fuck it. He took a breath, and pressed the buzzer for Flat A. Nothing. He turned away, but then there was a static crackle as the intercom was picked up.

"Hello?" Macca's voice.

"It's me."

"Brendan?" Macca sounded startled. There was a pause, and then, "I'll come down."

A minute later, the door opened, and Macca saw him and said, "Jesus Christ."

"Is it the beard?"

The two men looked at each other for a moment, and then Macca stepped aside, and Brendan walked past him and up the narrow stairs to his flat.


	3. Chapter 3

Brendan walked up the stairs ahead of Macca. The front door of the flat was ajar; he pushed it open and went inside.

For a few moments, neither man spoke. Macca didn't know if it was safe to ask anything: he had almost forgotten the feeling that he had lived with throughout his time with Brendan, of being in the presence of imminent danger, but it came back to him now. Except, the Brendan who had arrived on his doorstep a minute ago seemed a very different man from the one Macca had last seen in England almost exactly a year ago. The old version had been handsome and powerful and quick, but this one appeared to be none of those things. His face was swollen behind a ragged beard, and disfigured with bruises. He seemed wary and contained.

Brendan had no idea what, if anything, Macca knew of the turn that his life had taken. He cleared his throat.

"I been in prison."

"I heard." Macca had got the news from his nan, who had been told by his auntie Eileen.

"Good news travels fast." Brendan attempted an ironic smile, but his face felt tight and sore.

"When'd you get out?"

"Yesterday."

Macca waited, hoping for some explanation as to why Brendan had come here. Eventually though, he had to break the silence himself.

"When did you get here?"

"Belfast? This morning. Got the night ferry." There was another pause, and this time, Brendan bit the bullet. "I got no money, Macca. Getting a credit card sorted end of the week, but I ain't got enough cash to - "

The bathroom door opened, and a man emerged wearing just a towel around his waist. During the awkward silences Brendan had vaguely heard the sound of the shower running, but it hadn't registered with him until now. He looked at the guy. He was tall – about the same height as him – and maybe three or four years older. Nice body, Brendan thought as he instinctively checked him out.

The man appeared startled, and glanced at Macca.

"Brendan," Macca said, "This is Liam. Liam, my uncle Brendan."

Liam quickly recovered his composure, only looking slightly bashful as he held the towel in place with one hand.

"Sorry, I was just in the shower. Didn't realise we had company." He smiled apologetically. "I'm just gonna go and..."

Liam disappeared into the bedroom.

_We._ Jesus. It hadn't occurred to Brendan that Macca wouldn't be on his own. Why would it? He'd barely thought about the boy in the past twelve months, only when Macca had sent him the odd text which he sometimes answered, sometimes didn't. Brendan picked up his bag from the floor.

"I better get going, get out of your way."

"Where you gonna go, Bren? Just... Liam's off to work in a minute so, put your bag down, yeah?" Macca looked searchingly at Brendan, who hesitated then dropped his bag. Macca went to the bedroom, turning back to Brendan to say, "Don't go anywhere now."

Liam was getting dressed.

"Did you know he was coming?" he asked Macca in a whisper.

"No," Macca hissed, "He just turned up."

"Has he escaped?"

"No! Fuck, I don't think so. God."

"What does he want anyway?"

"Dunno yet. Look, Liam, I better go see..."

"Macca." Liam put a hand on his arm to stop him. "He knows you're gay, does he? I mean, I haven't just outed you to him have I?"

"He knows, yeah."

Macca returned to the front room. Brendan was still standing where he'd left him a minute ago.

"Liam's just off."

Macca noticed that as Liam rejoined them, Brendan stood up a little straighter and his expression sharpened.

Liam held out his hand.

"It was nice meeting you, Brendan. Good luck."

Now that Liam was dressed, in a dark suit and a sweater, there was a kind of breezy confidence about him. Brendan became acutely aware of his own appearance, the state of his face, the abrasions on his knuckles, his rain-soaked clothes. He barely recognised himself.

"Likewise," he said, putting as much authority into his handshake as he could muster.

At the flat door, Macca and Liam exchanged a few words which Brendan strained to hear.

"You gonna be okay here, babe?" Liam sounded concerned.

Macca didn't look at Brendan, but imagined his lip curling at _babe._

"Course. Brendan's family. I'll call you later." Macca stretched up, and as he and Liam kissed quickly on the lips, he was aware of Brendan's eyes on them.

Liam left.

"He knows, does he, about..?"

"He knows you were in prison."

"That all he knows?" Brendan felt a cold disquiet that this man he knew nothing about, might know all kinds about him. "Or you been blabbing?"

"He knows you're my uncle, I'm not exactly proud of the rest," Macca snapped. Then more gently, "I haven't told him about you and me."

"Keeping secrets? Tut tut."

"You'd know all about that, wouldn't you, Brendan?"

Brendan's instinct was to retaliate, like he always had when Macca got a bit mouthy – but he stopped himself. He was asking the boy for help, and would be a fool to fall back into the old antagonism.

"Yeah." He glanced at Macca. "Sorry."

He felt suddenly exhausted, and sat down heavily on the sofa.

Macca had seen Brendan sad before, and vulnerable, and with the weight of the world on him, but he had never once seen him look so defeated. It was unnerving, as if the Earth had slipped a little out of kilter: this wasn't how Brendan Brady was meant to be.

"You look done in, Bren. Have you had anything to eat?"

"Guess not." Brendan realised now that he hadn't eaten since yesterday afternoon, and that he was ravenous, and cold, and very, very tired.

"I'll go get us something. A pizza, yeah? From over the road." Macca got his jacket from the hook by the door. "Got a change of clothes with you?"

"Yeah." Brendan shivered, his damp clothes cold on his skin.

"Why don't you go and have a shower, okay? I'll be back by the time you're done."

:::::::

Brendan turned the shower up as hot as he could stand it. In prison you couldn't regulate the temperature yourself, the water was always hot but not hot enough, and you were never alone, and you got out as quickly as you could.

Now, he didn't hurry, and he imagined that a whole layer of skin was being seared away as the water flooded over his head and shoulders and down his body. When he stepped out to dry himself, he felt cleaner than he'd felt since before he was locked up.

The plaster had come off the cut below his eye, but he touched it and there was no blood. He slicked his wet hair back with his hands, but didn't look in the mirror.

By the time Macca got back, Brendan was dressed in the cleanest clothes he could find in his holdall – the jeans he'd been arrested in, and a sweatshirt that he'd worn in prison. Macca put the pizza on the small table in the kitchen, and Brendan sat down.

"Want a beer, Brendan?" Macca got a bottle out of the fridge, opened it and handed it to him.

"You not having one?"

"I gotta go to work in a minute, so." Macca took a slice of pizza, and watched Brendan devouring the rest. "I got you a couple of hundred from the cashpoint, Bren."

Brendan swallowed his last mouthful, and licked his fingers and thumbs.

"Appreciate it son, thanks. I'll pay you back." He took a swig of his beer. "Fuck, that's good."

Macca smiled.

"What you gonna do?"

"Find a B&B, I guess. Can I use your phone? Police kept my mobile, see."

Macca made a decision. He didn't know if it would turn out to be a mistake, but he went with it anyway.

"Look, why don't you stay here tonight? No point me lending you money to pay out for a room, when you'll only have to pay it back. I won't be back from work til gone eleven, so you'll get some peace and quiet here."

"You sure about that, Macca? What about your _boyfriend?_" Brendan had noted that there were two toothbrushes in the bathroom, and there'd been an easiness between Macca and Liam that made it clear that theirs wasn't just a casual hook-up.

Macca ignored the sarcastic emphasis on _boyfriend._

"Liam doesn't live here. Anyhow, I was just offering you a place to sleep, no extras, okay?" he teased.

Brendan smiled.

"How times change."

"You can use the landline if you want. I've got an old mobile in a drawer somewhere you can have, you can get a new sim card for a tenner. I could pick you one up."

"Okay. Cheers."

Macca cleared away the empty pizza box, then went to the bathroom and came back with a tube of ointment.

"Here." He stood over Brendan.

"What's that?" Brendan asked suspiciously.

"Arnica. For bruises. Hold still." He squeezed some of the cream onto his fingertips, and gently smoothed it onto the bruising on Brendan's cheekbones and eye sockets. "It's good stuff, I used to use it all the time when..."

Brendan flinched.

:::::::

As Macca was leaving for work a few minutes later, Brendan stopped him.

"Macca. The charges, they were all dropped. I didn't do it, okay?"

"I never though you did."

:::::::

On his own now in the flat, Brendan felt at a loss. He'd become institutionalised, he was beginning to see now: for a couple of months he'd hardly had to make any decisions about how to order his time, and in the absence of any real plans, he felt bewildered.

He looked around the small flat, and wandered into the bedroom.

The bed was the same, even the duvet cover was familiar. Last time Brendan had seen this room, he'd come here on his way to get the night ferry to England after his marriage had crashed. He'd stopped off to say goodbye, in a manner of speaking: Macca had been drinking and was barely conscious as Brendan heaved him into his arms and held him. He remembered biting into the boy's shoulder – to leave his mark, he supposed – and Macca waking up enough to kiss Brendan back when he kissed him for the last time ever.

He scanned the room. Among the clutter on the bedside cabinet there was a tube of lubricant, but no condoms. Liam went bareback with him then, did he? Must be serious. Brendan shuddered. Bet the boy couldn't wait to put all his tricks into practise, soon as he'd met someone new.

It was almost three o'clock, according to the clock on the radio alarm. Might as well get some rest, recharge his batteries, then get up again and start working out what he ought to do.

At first, he laid down on top of the cover and shut his eyes. Sleep should come easily – he'd only got a couple of hours of it last night on the ferry, so he was in need of it - but it eluded him. There was too much noise, unfamiliar and relentless, and he thought he would go mad with it. He lay trying to identify what it was, and after a while he realised that what he was hearing was _silence_. Fuck. Maybe he had lost his mind.

He sat up and switched the radio on, then stripped down to his boxers and got into bed, under the covers this time. The sheets smelt of sex.

As _Without You_ segued into _Jar of Hearts_, Brendan fell asleep.

:::::::

It was twenty past eleven when Macca got home from work. He'd been worried that he would get in and find that Brendan was gone, and his relief when he saw that his stuff was still lying around made him wonder why he cared so much: he'd thought he was over all that.

Softly, he opened the bedroom door and went in. He turned off the radio.

Brendan's arm was outside the cover, the skin pale in the dim light, and the edges of the tattoooed cross indistinct. His mouth was slightly open, and Macca stood and listened to his breathing, slow and deep.

Then he quietly got a blanket out from the top of the wardrobe, and went and made up a bed for himself on the sofa.


	4. Chapter 4

It was five in the morning when Brendan woke up. He'd slept since something like four o'clock yesterday afternoon, only briefly waking once, hours ago, disorientated after a dream: one of the usual dreams.

He got up and padded into the front room. Macca was on the sofa under a blanket, fast asleep. Brendan had only meant to have a few hours' sleep yesterday, then be up again by the time Macca got home from work sometime after eleven; then Brendan would have taken the couch and Macca could have slept in his own room. It didn't seem right, turning up out of the blue and commandeering the poor lad's bed.

Brendan was mildly surprised that Macca hadn't tried his luck and slipped into bed beside him. Time was, he would have done. He'd _loved_ Brendan, hadn't he? Said so enough times, even when he knew he'd be battered for it. But not any more, apparently: and that's what happened, wasn't it? Love died. Or it was a delusion, people kidded themselves that they felt it because they thought it would fix things, make things possible, protect them from a hostile world. Romantic bullshit. Even when people thought they felt it, it didn't stop them betraying the person they were meant to love. All it did was ramp up the pain.

He went to the bathroom, and then into the kitchen, where he picked up from the table the two hundred pounds that Macca had got from the cashpoint to lend to him yesterday. Then he went and got dressed in yesterday's jeans and sweatshirt. His leather jacket was on a hook by the front door: he shrugged it on, then glanced across at Macca to check that he was still asleep, before searching the pockets of the jacket he'd seen him put on when he went to work yesterday. He found Macca's keys: bingo. Brendan would be back before he'd need them, assuming that like yesterday, he didn't have to leave for work until the afternoon.

Brendan shut the flat door gently behind him, and went down the stairs and out through the door onto the street. It was five-thirty now, and despite the insipid light from the streetlamps, it _felt_ pitch dark. Apart from the occasional car passing by, it was dead silent.

He stood for a few moments. It would be an hour or more before people were around in any number, and longer before the shops and businesses came to life. But he was free to walk, and to breathe in the icy air, and he felt rested and energised.

He tried to remember when he'd last had a good night's sleep, never mind thirteen hours straight through. It was hopeless in prison, on a thin mattress on a narrow bed, with nameless men in other cells clattering and shouting all night long; he'd never slept for more than a couple of hours at a stretch, not for those two months. Before that? Before that, there'd always been something on his mind that he couldn't help teasing away at in the quiet and the dark. Money. The club and its politics and Warren Fox. Danny Houston, his body buried now, Brendan supposed, but often present in his head in its final hellish moments; and there, he was sure, in his future when in one way or another Brendan would have to pay. That was enough to bother anyone's peaceful nights, but there were other things too. His kids, of course: worrying like any parent would about how they were growing up. Better off without him, probably.

He'd found out in August that Declan had changed in the year since Brendan had moved out of their home. He'd visited them, of course, from time to time – usually when things had turned to shit in his new life and he'd needed a place to run to. Usually it was just for a few days. Brendan would book into a B&B, spend the day in the bars if it was a school day and see the boys after, or pick them up from home in the morning if they weren't at school. Either way, he'd take them out, spoil them, buy them stuff, treat them to all the fast food they could eat; keep moving, never stay still long enough for them to ask the questions they must want to ask about why he'd fucked off and left them behind. Then he'd take them home and have a row with Eileen, and do the same thing the next day and the next until it was time to go back to England. Make promises to come back soon, and maybe they would come and see him in the holidays, why not? Wonder if they knew he was lying.

Then in August Declan really had come, and amid all the panic, Brendan gradually realised that what he'd missed in all those trips to see the kids was that this son of his was no longer the boy he'd been a year before. He had the traits of a teenager at times – sullen, monosyllabic, a bit of a brat – but it was something of a pose, as if he was trying it on for size, because at other times a kind of sweetness came through. And Christ, Brendan had mucked him around. In prison, he'd thought back to a day in the park when he'd sat the lad down and told him what it took to be a man; and the memory of it made him clammy with sweat. His own father's voice spewing out of his mouth and into the ears of his son.

But the poison didn't take. The proof of that, and the proof that Declan was growing up just fine without him, came when Brendan held Declan in his arms, and Declan held him just as tightly in return, after Brendan said the words for the first time in his life: _I'm gay._ Declan, with all that courage and love, was more of a man than Brendan had had the nerve to be. Love? Maybe that kind, between a parent and a child, was authentic. Not guaranteed, but authentic.

Before Declan came: that was when Brendan had last slept all night long. He didn't remember the night, but he remembered the feeling the following morning, that the day was alive with potential, and that the summer would never end.

:::::::

He'd walked around for some time now; the sky was lightening and there were people around. Brendan had forgotten his bruises and black eyes, but now he was reminded as he saw the various expressions on the faces of those who happened to glance at him: curiosity mainly, but also distaste and, sometimes, pity.

He bought a paper and went into a cafe for breakfast. At eight thirty-five he moved to a table by the window, and began to watch the pedestrians passing by. Soon, kids in school uniform started to appear, and he scanned each one as he sighted them in the distance.

Brendan was beginning to think they'd changed their route to school, when there they were, coming round the far corner on the other side of the road, unmistakeable even before they drew near. Declan, tall and fair, his hand occasionally landing on his little brother's shoulder to steer him or hurry him. Padraig, not so little any more, dark-haired and laughing. They were both laughing. It hadn't destroyed Declan, then, knowing his dad was gay, and knowing his dad was banged up on three charges of murder. Brendan wasn't sure if Padraig knew either of those things. Eileen had told Cheryl on the phone that Declan knew about the latter; and about the former, Declan knew courtesy of Rae. Rae, with her penchant for spreading information that she ought to keep to herself. She'd paid for it now, but even in death she'd managed to fuck with Brendan's life. Still, if she hadn't let her mouth run away with her that day in September, Brendan would still be living with the terror of his son finding out what he was. There would always be fears, but that one at least was gone: he should have thanked Rae, really. Maybe one day he would take her some flowers.

He remembered that day, hearing Stephen's footsteps coming up the stairs at Chez Chez, and seeing his face. Stephen's face, looking scared, and looking brave.

"What are you doing here? I thought I told you to..." Brendan had willed Stephen to speak, but he seemed unable. "What? What is it? Has something happened? Stephen?"

Thinking, _I__t must be Lynsey_, because he'd asked this boy to go and keep an eye on her, and the boy had agreed even though Brendan had hurt him, and hurt him, and hurt him.

"Brendan..." A tremble in his voice, but his eyes unwavering.

"Something happened to Lynsey? Tell me." A breath. "Please."

"No, it's not Lynsey. It's..." Then his words tumbling out. "Rae came round, she was angry. Angry about you, I think, about you and me, and she said... she said you were never gonna admit that you were gay - "

Par for the course for the little bitch.

"Jesus, Stephen - "

"And Declan heard. She didn't know he was there, Brendan, none of us did. She's sorry, she said she's sorry, but he knows now, Brendan, he knows..."

Wanting to lash out at him for bringing that girl into his life, into his son's life. Moving round from behind the bar to grab him and teach him a lesson. But Stephen standing there, holding his ground, somehow stopping Brendan in his tracks before he'd laid a finger on him. Then, time slowing down, and a terrible clarity. Knowing what had to be done: the conversation that he'd convinced himself he would never have to have.

"What did he say?" Startling himself with the calmness of his own voice. "Declan, did he... did he say anything?"

"He ran upstairs. I think Lyns was gonna talk to him." Stephen's eyes still full of fear.

Christ, he hadn't had to come. The boy had guts, to be the one that brought the news.

Turning from him, because as well as the fear there was something else in his eyes, something that looked like love, and if it wasn't for that, none of this would be happening.

Feeling weakened, and needing to feel strong.

"Mind the bar for me."

"Brendan?"

Stopping on the way down the stairs, but not turning back to look at Stephen again.

"What?"

"It's gonna be okay."

Thinking, _How can you believe that?_

But he'd been right, hadn't he? Stephen wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but at least about this, about telling the truth to Declan, he had been right all along.

:::::::

The boys drew nearer, and now they were directly across the road. Declan had a new hairstyle: it reminded Brendan of...

Too close.

They were too close. He turned away from the window, because he couldn't let them see him like this. He didn't know if they knew he was out. He didn't know if they knew – and for the first time, Brendan thought it of himself – that he was _missing._


	5. Chapter 5

Brendan stayed in the cafe for a few more minutes after his sons disappeared from sight, until he was sure they'd have reached school and there would be no danger of bumping into them. Then he paid his bill and headed into town.

He needed some new clothes, not just because he had so few with him, but also because the ones he'd worn in prison – the ones he was wearing now – he never wanted to see again. The money he had wouldn't stretch very far: he had the two hundred pounds that Macca had loaned him yesterday, plus what was left of the cash he'd had on him when he was arrested. It was Wednesday now, and his new credit card should be at the bank for him to pick up on Friday, but if it wasn't there then and he had to wait until Monday, Brendan was pretty sure he could get some more cash out of Macca to keep him going until then. Meanwhile, he had to spend carefully, so he swerved the shops he'd prefer to go to, and picked up what he wanted – jeans, T-shirts, a black polo-neck sweater, underwear – for less than a hundred and fifty quid.

There were years, he reflected as he headed back towards Macca's place, when spending that amount of money would have been unthinkable. _Having_ that amount of money, even.

:::::::

Brendan and Eileen had not long been married, and Declan was a baby, when it hit Brendan forcefully that the two of them – the girl and the child – depended on him. He wasn't yet out of his teens, but already he had a history of sometimes making money, sometimes not; and when he got it, he spent it. With a wife and a son, he realised he had to bring in the money all the time, and it weighed heavily on him. That was when he went to the fellas that he and Peter used to do the odd job for, and made it known that he was hungry for more.

They'd been liked, him and Peter. They'd come as a team, a couple of kids with a taste for money and a knack for trouble, and got themselves noticed by the men who ran things. At first they'd been given a few quid to do a bit of running, but they'd had something about them that made them more useful than the average teenage lad. Both of them were clever and quick, and they thought on their feet; they were fearless about using their fists if they had to get out of a situation, but bright enough to talk their way out, most times. And they had charm, buckets of it: Brendan could see it in Peter, and saw his own reflected back at him, and that was why they were so effective on jobs where the big muscle wasn't needed: two good looking young boys who could charm their way into where they needed to be, and charm their way out too. That gave them the element of surprise if they did have to get nasty. No-one expected it of them, so when someone tried to hold out on them – ask for a few days' grace on their loan or their protection payment, or try to pay less than they'd agreed for whatever Brendan and Peter were delivering – they'd be shocked by the two kids' reaction. That was Peter's forte, persuading people to pay up. Sometimes Brendan used to look at him and think, _Fuck, you really would kill them, wouldn't you?_ There was a thrill to it.

Brendan had dropped out of that world after he and Peter fell out, after the accident. Thought he'd better try going straight, after God spared him. Got with Eileen, because she would help him go straight. Then when they lost their first baby, things got confused again: Brendan had been spared, but God was still punishing him for what he had done. For what he _was_, because God could see into his core and see the things that he wanted to do. What Brendan was, wasn't right. He'd known that for as long as he could remember.

Marrying Eileen was a promise to her and to himself and to the world, before God, that he had turned his back on that life: the crime and the sin that burned inside him. But the reality was that there was no money, and he had to provide, and so he returned to the men who he and Peter used to work for, and bit by bit he began to make it. And as he'd strayed again from the straight path, what was the point any more in struggling when temptation came? A lad in a bar, and a look passing between them; a lurch in the stomach as he followed the lad to the toilets. Not knowing what to do, but the lad knowing and, pressed together in a rancid cubicle, trying to keep quiet as they wanked each other off, frantic and rough. His hand hot and sticky with cum; the lad's breath damp against Brendan's neck as they leaned against each other in the comedown. The first cock he'd ever touched except for his own, and except for his baby boy's when it was his turn to wash him: remembering Declan, and Eileen, and reaching for the door to get out. The lad stopping him and pulling towards him for a kiss. A_ kiss._ Brendan grabbing him and slamming him against the wall, and spitting into his face, _You filthy queer._ The noise the guy's head made as it hit the tiles. Walking out to the sound of the lad crying. Terrified at the realisation that those few minutes with that boy's hands on him had been more satisfying than anything with Eileen had ever been.

:::::::

There'd been lean times since then, but when the money came in it came in spades, so Eileen had turned a blind eye to what he did to earn it. The only time in years that he'd been completely broke was after Eileen discovered his affair. He'd tried desperately, before he left Belfast, to salvage his marriage or at least sort out some damage limitation, so he could still see his kids and persuade his wife to keep her mouth shut. And while he was busy doing that, he'd taken his eye off the ball and ended up thousands of pounds down on a drugs deal. Then just before he escaped to England, he'd given Eileen all the cash he could get his hands on, because he owed her and needed to prove that he would still provide for her and his children just like he'd always promised.

He'd skimmed off a few hundred though, before handing the rest to Eileen. Those few hundred, he gave to Macca, because the boy had lost his job, and because... A phrase came back to Brendan as he remembered that time; a phrase that had been used on him a year later, by someone else, stinging like a slap on the face: _What's it called? Yeah, severance pay. It's the least that you could do._

Brendan had fled to England then with nothing, and lived off his sister at first. He hadn't wanted to steal from Cheryl, but he'd had no choice until he found his feet and looked up some old contacts from his Liverpool days.

Now, he'd got to the point where he had money stashed away, lots of it, but it was all in England. That was one reason to go back.

:::::::

When Macca woke up on the sofa and found that Brendan was gone, along with the money from the kitchen table, he thought he might have left again for good. It was only a few moments before he found that Brendan's bag was still there, and in it – on a cursory search – his passport among other things; so he knew he'd be coming back. But in those moments, Macca felt a pang of loss which shocked him. How had Brendan got under his skin again in less than twenty-four hours? They hadn't seen each other for a year, and Macca reminded himself that Brendan was in love with someone else; it had been obvious to him, even if it hadn't been to Brendan himself, or to Ste for that matter. That was what had finally driven Macca to come back home to Belfast. Not the brutality – he'd lived with that throughout their time together. Not the secrecy, because he'd signed up for that from the start, as the price he'd have to pay for seeing a married man. It wasn't even the fact that Brendan didn't love him that had driven him back home, because Macca had long ago come to the conclusion that Brendan was incapable of loving any man. No, the wake-up call had finally come when he realised that, less than four months after ending things with Macca, Brendan had fallen in love.

He wondered if Brendan and Ste were still together. It must have complicated things, with Rae being one of the girls Brendan had been charged with killing. Macca remembered Rae, with her concern for Ste and her cluelessness about Brendan's involvement with him. He remembered her shock when he'd broken it to her, and felt a little guilty.

Ste must have been gutted when Rae was killed. And Brendan wouldn't have been there to comfort him, not if he'd been arrested straight after. Not that he was the comforting kind, but still, it made it even stranger that Brendan had come straight to Belfast when he was set free, instead of returning to Ste. Because they must still be together, they had to be: Brendan had been possessive enough with Macca, so with Ste – with actual love in the mix – there's no way that he would have let him out of his grip.

Macca had moved on too. He was with Liam now, and Liam was a better man than Brendan could ever be. Macca focussed on this as he heard a key in the lock: he wasn't expecting Liam, but he sometimes dropped in during the day if he had a meeting nearby.

Only, it wasn't Liam, it was Brendan.

"How did you get in?"

"Borrowed your keys." Brendan dropped them into the pocket of Macca's jacket where he'd found them. "Knew you wouldn't mind."

Macca wanted to tell Brendan not to go down his pockets, and not to make assumptions about what he would or wouldn't mind, but although the fire seemed to have gone from Brendan since he last saw him a year ago, there was no point in sparking him off. Macca sighed.

"I'll get you some spares cut if you're staying."

"What happened to my set then? Given them to your _boyfriend,_ have you?"

Not fiery, no, but Christ he was a condescending bastard. Macca felt himself beginning to take the bait.

"That's right, aye," he said as evenly as he could.

"Adorable."

"Fuck you." Macca's mobile rang then, and he picked it up off the arm of the sofa. Shit. He looked at Brendan. "It's Cheryl."

"You ain't seen me, Macca." Brendan took a step towards him. "Okay?"

"I'll let it go to voicemail."

"No, no, answer it." Brendan knew that if Macca didn't take the call now, Cheryl was sure to phone back, and at least if they spoke now Brendan was here to listen to what was said. Fuck knew what the boy would let slip if he wasn't being overheard.

Macca picked up the call, aware of Brendan listening to his side of the conversation.

"Hello?"

"Macca, is that you?" Cheryl's voice was strained.

"Yeah, how's it going Cheryl?"

"Not too good, to be honest. I'm sorry to bother you, love, but it's... it's about Brendan."

Macca swallowed.

"Oh yeah? What about him?"

"Um, he's... I expect you heard, he's been in prison..."

"I heard, yeah."

"Okay, he didn't do it. He was framed, and they caught the real killer, and they let Brendan out on Monday but he's disappeared, and me and Lynsey, we're ringing around everyone we can think of in case anyone's seen him, and I know - " Her torrent of words stopped abruptly, and she continued with hesitation. "I know that you two... used to be close. So I was wondering if by any chance you've heard from him."

Cheryl knew. Did that mean that Brendan was out? It had never occurred to Macca that Brendan was no longer living a lie. He glanced at him, and got a glare in return.

"No, Chez, he hasn't rung me."

"Okay, love." Cheryl sounded deflated. "Well it was a long shot anyway."

"Are you okay? Look, he'll turn up, I'm sure he will."

"I know. I know, Macca, it's just... you didn't see him in that place. He wasn't himself any more, you know? I'm just scared he'll do something stupid."

"You mean, like - ?"

"Yeah. Oh god, Macca, it was horrible, he was getting beaten up every day, his face..." Cheryl began to cry. "And I think it might be because he's gay, but he wouldn't say, wouldn't talk to me, and he's... he's not okay with that. You must know that better than most..."

"Look, Chez, I'm sure he'll be okay, yeah?" Macca wanted to tell her that her brother was right here, that she needn't be so upset, that sooner or later he would go home to her; but with Brendan standing over him, he couldn't say any more. "If I get any news, I'll phone you."

"Okay. Thanks, love, thanks. I'd better go. Look, I should have stayed in touch with you before, Macca, only when I found out about you and Brendan it was a bit of a shock, you know? And I didn't know what to - "

"No worries."

They ended the call.

"Well?" Brendan demanded. "What she say?"

"Just, you've disappeared and they're worried you're gonna do something stupid, Bren."

"Who's 'they'?" Brendan's heart seemed to stop for a second.

"She said Lynsey's helping her ring people."

Brendan nodded shortly.

"I'm gonna get a shower."

:::::::

It was good to put on some new clothes; cast off the old.

Once he was dressed, Brendan dug into one of the clear plastic bags his property had been returned in by the police, pulled out his cross, and laid it on the bed.

Eileen had given it to him, years ago. Its chain had been broken and replaced a couple of times since he'd had it, once after some stupid fight with Malachy, and once – Brendan picked up the cross and stroked its smooth surface with his thumb – once when Stephen caught it in his mouth as Brendan moved inside him.

The boy's eyes were half closed, and shining with desire and with a kind of amusement, which was disconcerting and challenging and typical of him, with his guileless joy in what they did together. Brendan's back had arched up and away from Stephen's body as they came, and the chain had snapped, and Stephen had laughed with the cross still clamped between his teeth. Brendan had bitten it out of his mouth and dropped it onto the pillow, and then kissed him and felt the boy's arms tighten around him.

Brendan fastened it around his neck for the first time since before prison. The metal was cold against his skin: that must have been why a shiver ran through him.


	6. Chapter 6

Brendan's phone was still in the hands of the police, so Macca had dug out an old one of his from before his latest upgrade, and bought a sim card for it. When Brendan emerged after he'd disappeared for a shower following Macca's phonecall from Cheryl, Macca gave it to him.

"Here. It's got a tenner on it, get you started."

Brendan was puzzled by how generous Macca was being towards him. They'd hardly parted on good terms last year, and Brendan had treated him badly before that; and yet here he was, letting him stay in his flat, lending him money, giving him a phone. Selflessness made Brendan suspicious, and he always looked for the real agenda, but what Macca wanted had always been straightforward. That couldn't be what he wanted now, though: he was happy with his boyfriend, apparently, and in any case Brendan had nothing for him. Maybe he was simply being kind – he had been in the past, after all. That was the boy's trouble, he'd been too fucking forgiving.

"I'll pay you back, when I pay the rest back."

"I've put some numbers on it, Bren, anybody's I've got that you might want. Cheryl's and so on."

"Yeah? Thanks for that."

"No problem."

They both sat down, Brendan on the sofa, Macca on the arm of a chair. Brendan scrolled through the contacts on the mobile: _Cheryl. Chez Chez. Declan. Eileen. _A couple of relatives from Macca and Eileen's side of the family.

"My mother-in-law? _Really?_"

She was the last person who would want to hear from Brendan.

"Oi," Macca mock-scolded, "That's my nan you're talking about."

"Yeah. Don't think I'll be surprising her."

"She always speaks so highly of you."

"Sure she does." He carried on scrolling: _Macca_, inevitably_. Pete._ "Pete who, is this?"

"Pete Hamill." Macca tensed as he saw Brendan's expression darken.

"What you got his number for? Since when have you two been mates, Macca, hm?" Brendan knew that they had come across each other from time to time, because they knew people in common – Cheryl and Lynsey and Eileen among them – and in some ways Belfast was a small town. But he'd had no idea they were in touch with each other.

"We're not mates, Bren. We just ran into each other one time, swapped numbers."

"Oh yeah? When?"

"A while ago now." Macca could tell there was a problem, and thought the less he said, the better; but Brendan's silence forced him to continue. "Last year, Christmas time I think."

"And what, cosy chats was it?" Brendan got up and stood over Macca. "What did you talk about, you and Peter? What did he tell you about me?"

:::::::

It was early December. Macca had been back in Belfast for a couple of weeks after his time in Chester; he'd come home to a pile of bills, and had only just managed to persuade his landlord to give him a bit longer to get up to date with his rent.

He was out looking for work when he turned a corner and almost got run down by a wheelchair. He recognised its owner.

"Oh, Pete. Sorry, wasn't looking where I was going." He could see that Pete couldn't place him at first, but then the penny dropped.

"My fault, I should stick to the speed limit." Pete smiled. "How's it going, Macca? You look..."

Macca knew that he looked underweight and pale.

"I was in hospital for a bit, in England. Not long been back as it goes."

"Nothing serious I hope."

"On the mend now." He shifted awkwardly.

"England, yeah? Whereabouts?"

"Chester way."

"Oh, okay. Did you see the girls when you were over? Cheryl and Lyns – that's where they are, isn't it?" Pete sounded intrigued.

"Yeah, that's why I went, try my luck with work, and see Cheryl and..."

"Doing okay over there, are they? Heard Cheryl had a bit of luck."

"Think so, yeah."

"And Brendan Brady? He's over there with his sister, so I hear. After his marriage difficulties."

Macca wondered what version of the story Pete had heard.

"Yeah, he's doing alright."

Pete nodded.

"Always falls on his feet, our Brendan."

Macca felt his breath catch, and looked away.

"Seems to, aye."

"You alright, Macca? Look, I'm only up the road, come away to mine and I'll stick the kettle on."

They didn't talk on the way; it was all Macca could do to keep up with Pete. When they got to Pete's flat, Macca sat down in the kitchen, feeling shaky. He wasn't yet fully recovered from the aftermath of his injuries, but hearing Brendan's name mentioned for the first time since they'd parted in England made him realise that it was the emotional fallout, not the physical, that was hurting him now.

He looked up to see Pete's clear eyes scrutinising him.

"Feeling better now, Macca?" He put a mug of tea down on the table in front of him. "You looked like you'd seen a ghost."

"Yeah, sorry, I just..."

"We were talking about Brendan, weren't we?"

"Were we?"

"It's okay, Macca. Me and Brendan go back a long way. I know a bit about him."

Macca looked at him, startled. Did Pete know that Brendan was gay? It was fairly common knowledge that Macca was, so had he put two and two together?

"Like what?" Macca asked carefully.

"Like... he likes to keep a secret." He paused. "Macca, if you want to talk about anything, I'm pretty good at keeping secrets myself."

"You know, don't you?"

"What about?"

"Me and him."

"I didn't. But I'm - "

"Shit, Pete, I shouldn't have said anything - " Macca got up to go, but Pete grabbed him by the wrist to stop him.

"It's okay, Macca. I didn't know about the two of you, but I already knew about Brendan: that he's gay."

Macca sat back down.

"I didn't think anybody knew. Apart from... you know... other lads. Oh! You're not..?"

Pete smiled.

"No, I'm not gay. But I found out about Brendan a long time ago." Pete's tone went cold. "And he hates me for it."

"That why you two fell out?" Macca had heard rumours that Brendan and Pete had some sort of long-running feud going on, but that they had been friends when they were kids.

"Kind of. Among other things." Pete took a swig of his tea. "So, you and Brendan, it's over now I presume?"

Macca nodded, and found himself wiping away tears with the back of his hand, angry with himself for being so pathetic.

"Yeah, we're done. It was over in the Summer, just took me a while to get my head around it."

"So it was you, then? Brendan had an affair with you, and that's what split him and Eileen up?"

"I never meant for Eileen to get hurt though, Pete. Neither of us did."

"Wasn't your fault though, was it? He's the one that was married. To be honest, it's amazing it didn't happen before, with Brendan's... confusion."

"How did you know about him, Pete? About him being gay?"

"Like I said, we go back a long way." Pete paused, long enough for Macca to know that that line of questioning was closed. "What happened then, Macca, after Brendan ran off to England? Did he ask you to follow him?"

"What? No! No, he told me not to, said it was over, but I thought... I thought that once Eileen was out of the picture it would be different, I thought _he'd_ be different, and we could... I can't believe I was so stupid."

"You loved him?"

"Yeah." Macca hadn't realised just how much he needed to talk about Brendan, and his words now came in a flood. "See, he was all I had. I'd stopped seeing my mates, pretty much, so I'd always be home if he came round, and then every time I saw the family he used to ask me loads of questions, about what I'd said to them, you know? So by the end I was hardly seeing them either, just to save the hassle. And then I lost my job, and then when Brendan went away I had nothing left, did I? So I had to go after him, at least to try..."

"Macca, that's psychological abuse, what he did to you."

"You don't understand."

Pete sighed.

"When you turned up in Chester, he wasn't happy I take it."

"You could say that."

"And you... What did you say you were in hospital for?"

"Got mugged." Macca tried to gauge whether Pete had guessed what had happened.

"Brendan's got a temper, hasn't he? Is that it – did Brendan beat you up?"

Macca stared at his hands clenched on the table in front of him, their knuckles white.

"It was my own fault."

"Jesus, Macca, is that what he told you?"

"I shouldn't have gone though, Pete, he told me not to enough times, I should've known what would happen."

"Should've known? Why, had he done it before? Macca, had Brendan hit you before?"

"Only when I pushed him too far. I knew what he was like."

Neither of them spoke for a minute or two. Pete made another cup of tea.

"You realised in the end, anyway, Macca."

"How d'you mean?"

"That what he did to you was wrong. That's why you came home, wasn't it? After he put you in hospital."

"I came home because he got himself a new boyfriend." Macca failed to keep the bitterness out of his voice. He didn't tell Pete that Brendan had fallen in love, like he'd never done with Macca; because he couldn't bear to say the word.

"You still would've gone back to him, if he hadn't found someone else?" Pete stared intently at Macca. "That's... He really must have something, that's all I can say."

"Yeah he does. _Did._ Look, thanks for the tea, Pete, but I better get going. You won't tell him, will you, that I've been talking about him? It's just, if he ever finds out - "

"Course not. I doubt I'll be seeing him again anyhow."

They exchanged numbers, and Pete told Macca to call him if he ever needed to talk.

When he came away, Macca thought about what Pete had said, and his incredulity about him returning to Brendan in spite of the abuse. He felt as if the curtains had parted and let the light shine in.

:::::::

"What did you talk about, you and Peter? What did he tell you about me?"

What did _Pete_ tell _Macca_? That wasn't what Macca thought Brendan would ask. What _could_ Pete have told him, he wondered.

"Think a lot of yourself, don't you?" He looked up at Brendan steadily.

"What did he tell you?"

"Nothing. Look, it was near enough a year ago, Bren, I haven't seen him since."

"Okay." Brendan smiled without smiling. "Just asking."

Macca escaped to get ready for work.

Brendan sat down again. He was losing his grip on who knew what about him. Cheryl knew – or at least suspected – that the accident with Peter hadn't been an accident, but it looked like Peter hadn't shared that little nugget with Macca. He wondered though if Peter had told anyone else, before he left Hollyoaks a couple of months back, as a little parting shot: Warren Fox, for instance. Maybe Brendan ought to pay his old friend a visit, seeing as they were both back in town.

It was the thought of Foxy that made Brendan's stomach tighten, though. That man knew too much, and had done too much. If he hadn't poisoned Stephen's mind by telling him about Danny Houston, maybe the boy wouldn't have been so quick to believe that Brendan had murdered Rae and the rest. Warren would be dealt with, it was just a question of working out how.

He picked up the mobile phone again, and looked through the remaining few contacts.

_Ste._

It was the name of a stranger: someone who didn't know him at all.

_Edit contact._ He highlighted an option: _Delete contact._ He pressed it, and a prompt popped up, _Delete Ste from Contacts?_ Brendan's thumb hovered for a moment.

_Cancel._ He sighed. _Edit name._

_Ste... _Brendan typed in ..._phen._


	7. Chapter 7

In his first week out of prison, Brendan got himself into a kind of routine. Even as he did it, he was aware that it was a symptom of his time inside, a capitulation to how the institution had wanted him to behave. Still, he let it happen: for a weaker man it might be a trap, but he knew he'd be strong enough to let it go once it no longer suited him.

For now, he needed it, because he didn't have anything to do. He could barely even rationalise why he had come to Belfast, when he didn't want to let his children see him, and there was no-one but them that he wanted to see. He didn't know how long he was going to spend here either, but he did know that at some point he would return to England, because Warren Fox had to get what was coming to him.

Brendan had learnt something in prison. If you were smart you had to, even if you were only in on remand, even if you hadn't done the crimes you were charged with. And Brendan was smart, so he had learnt to choose his battles. There was no point in getting into scraps, making enemies; if trouble came to you, you dealt with it because however battered you got, you didn't dare show that you were beaten. But you didn't get riled up, not in front of people, because there were too many men in there who would take it as a challenge. Brendan saw the way it played out among the other prisoners. There were some who reacted to every provocation, intended or imagined: someone brushing against them in the corridor, or taking too long on the payphone when there was a queue. They'd lose it, throw insults and punches, start feuds, and for what? None of those men in there were worth the grief, not even the ones who set about him every day. Brendan hated them, but they were stooges. His real enemy was on the outside, calling the shots, fucking with Brendan's life just like he'd done ever since he came back from the dead the year before.

For a time, Brendan had thought that if he ever got out, he wouldn't be out for long. He'd wanted Warren dead, and he couldn't see himself getting away with murder twice: only Foxy had mastered that art, for all that he was just a glorified thug. But things had changed, or begun to, as both Cheryl and Lynsey had persisted in visiting, not giving up on him however hostile he was. Lynsey bore the brunt of it; she was full of advice, believing that she had an insight into what he was going through. It was laughable. But there was something she did, a message she sent him, _Do not seek revenge_, which showed that although she might be naïve, she could sense what he was planning. Of course he was going to seek revenge: eye for eye, tooth for tooth, foot for foot. But by the time he got out, Brian's final words to him – that if he ended up back inside he'd be the loser – served to confirm that the urge to end the life of his enemy had left him.

He would be cleverer than that. It was a matter of working out how, and that became part of the routine that he adopted in his first week in Belfast: once Macca left for work in the afternoons, Brendan would borrow the lad's bed and lie there, sleeping and waking, dreaming and planning.

In the mornings though, he would go out early and head for the cafe where he'd first gone on Wednesday, in time to sit by the window again and watch Declan and Padraig pass by on their way to school. Once they were out of sight Brendan would finish his coffee and head for the gym. He'd found a place where he could pay by the hour and didn't have to become a member, and he would go there and do a punishing session, pushing on through the pain when his body screamed that it had had enough. Then he'd take a shower and go and have a late breakfast somewhere, ravenous and buzzing, his blood pumping. After that, Brendan would do anything he needed to do in town – trying not to spend much money in the process – and then he'd head back to Macca's place around midday.

Brendan had assumed, because of the hours Macca worked, that he had a job in a bar, but he hadn't bothered to ask him about it; and it turned out he was working in a cinema. He had to leave home around two-thirty, so in between Brendan getting back and Macca leaving, they had a couple of hours when they would have something to eat and talk a bit. And they argued: Brendan's prison philosophy of choosing your battles went by the board, because Macca wound him up, always had done, and it was so easy to fall back into their old pattern. The combination of being beholden to the boy – for the roof over his head, the money he'd borrowed – and being subjected to his provoking attitude, made Brendan irritable. Back in the day, Brendan used to scare him into shutting up if he went too far, or give him a smack if he didn't get the message; or they'd fuck it out, which was what that lad had seemed to want. Macca used to like angry sex to an extent that sometimes even Brendan had felt freaked out.

He couldn't work out if that was what Macca was after now, or if he was just testing Brendan to see if he would make a move on him after all this time. Either way, the kid was wasting his time. Brendan wasn't going to do anything to jeopardise his free board and lodging, especially when he found out on Friday that his replacement credit card hadn't arrived at the bank, so he wouldn't get hold of it now until after the weekend.

Brendan was in a foul mood when he got back to the flat after his futile visit to the bank. Macca was instantly wary, and instantly felt a shiver of excitement.

He loved Liam. The only serious boyfriend Macca had had before was Matt, whom he'd left when he'd found himself falling in love with Brendan. In retrospect he reckoned that he couldn't have loved Matt; but Liam was different. Liam was older, around Brendan's age; he was tall and lean and confident and clever. Liam was kind: he knew Macca had come out of a violent relationship when they met, and so he was never pushy or domineering, and it had been months before they first slept together. And it was just a few weeks ago that Liam had told Macca that he loved him, and Macca had said it back. He was glad to be over Brendan.

Brendan stomped into the flat, slung his leather jacket onto a chair, and sat down heavily on the sofa. Macca picked up the jacket and hung it on the hook by the door. Brendan hugged a cushion, agitatedly picking at the loose threads in its embroidered pattern. Macca watched him carefully. There'd been no sign of violence since Brendan had turned up a few days ago, but now its potential hung in the air and made Macca's heart thump.

"What's up with you?" he asked Brendan.

"Fucking credit card ain't arrived. Bank's a fucking joke." He pulled a thread, and the dark blue wing of a bird unravelled.

"I can get you out some more cash if you want, Bren." Macca watched as Brendan loosened another thread of silk. "Brendan, you're gonna ruin that."

Brendan threw the cushion at Macca.

"Let me guess. _Liam_ bought it for you, did he?"

"So what if he did?" Macca felt belittled and defensive.

"Pair of queers."

"You can talk." Macca waited for the retaliation, but it didn't come. "At least Liam doesn't hide who he is."

"Mister Perfect, is he? So I'm wondering, Macca, why ain't you told him I'm gay? Scared he'll kick off?"

_I'm gay._ Macca couldn't believe his ears. He knew from Cheryl's phone call that she now knew that her brother was gay, so the word must be getting around, but to hear Brendan say the words...

Brendan had never seen someone's jaw literally drop before. Interesting: even out-and-proud little Macca was wrongfooted. In being blatant about it, being _Fuck you_, being _So what?_ there was a power that Brendan had only lately begun to recognise. For most of his life he'd been certain that he'd be diminished in the eyes of anyone who saw him as a poof, a fag, all those words he'd heard as a boy.

Macca composed himself.

"Liam doesn't kick off, Bren. I didn't tell him cos I don't blab about your business, do I."

Brendan nodded shortly. It was true, Macca had always kept his mouth shut.

"You might as well tell him. Every fucker else knows."

"Everyone? Not your lads?"

"Declan does, yeah. Dunno about Padraig." Brendan's stomach tightened. "Ain't had a chance to find out."

"That's great though, Brendan. That you decided to come out, you know? After all these years."

_Decided?_ Was that what Macca thought? It hadn't been a decision, it had been an insidious contagion of whispers and betrayals. The knowledge of what Brendan was, what he _did_, had seeped from one person to another, beyond his control; and then on the night that he had outed himself, he had had no choice at all.

:::::::

"Be a shame to see those good looks ruined. I am gonna smash the doors off that closet you've been hiding in, and let the whole world know about your precious little Stephen."

Brendan had got one over on Warren, buying Cheryl's share of the club with money stolen from him. The money was dodgy anyway, so Brendan had had as much or as little right to it as Warren, and in any case, it felt good. And of course Warren was seething. Brendan had expected that – looked forward to it even – and in due course he knew he'd have to brace himself for the next bout of one-upmanship that would lead to the power shifting between them again. Only this time, Warren was clever.

_Be a shame to see those good looks ruined._

Everything in the bar went out of focus: all Brendan could see was the boy, and it was confusing because he couldn't be sure if he was really seeing him, or if he was seeing him in his head, but either way he had to hold on to the picture because he was going to lose him now, to save him. It had to be done.

He heard his own voice, dry and dead, shouting for attention. People appeared in his peripheral vision from everywhere, the office, the toilets, the stairs; and right on cue, the boy was there beside him as if he knew what was going to happen, although his face said that he didn't have a clue.

"Stephen."

Brendan took hold of him with a hand round the back of his head and kissed him, hard, fierce, the first time in his life that he'd deliberately let himself be witnessed kissing a man, and in doing so he took the power back from Warren. But when he looked into Stephen's eyes afterwards, he saw a mess of incomprehension.

Brendan turned to Warren to finish it. To disown Stephen, to make him safe.

"I'm done with him. Do what you want."

Then there was a stagey face-off with Warren, Mitzeee doing the cliché routine of keeping her man from fighting, Brendan acting like he'd won. And then he had a sensation that he was collapsing in on himself. He was vaguely conscious of people stirring around him; he knew without looking that Stephen had left; felt cold sweat on his back. Someone spoke to him, Cheryl perhaps. He walked down the stairs, shouldering people out of the way as he went, and out into the street; he fought the instinct to run.

He made it home and sat on the sofa, head in hands, eyes shut, nauseous. For how long, he couldn't say.

Someone knocked on the door. Brendan couldn't face Cheryl, not now. She'd be angry, somehow make it all about her feelings; or worse, she'd be hurt, and he'd have to be the strong one like he always was, like he always bloody had been, even though he wanted to curl up in a corner and howl.

Cheryl had a key though, so it wouldn't be her at the door. Whoever it was, they knocked again, insistent. Brendan stood and ran his hands through his hair, then went and looked through the spyhole. It was Stephen. Of course it was, he was always one to put his hand in the flames.

Brendan unlatched the door and walked away into the kitchen. He heard the front door close, and then the boy was there with him, asking questions, questions. Brendan got the whiskey bottle, ice, a glass; poured one and downed it. He couldn't look at him at first: didn't need to, because Stephen's face was always there. _Be a shame to see those good looks ruined._

The boy was trying to make it make sense, speaking his thoughts as they came into his head. He didn't believe Brendan had meant it when he'd said he was done with him. He wished he had kissed Brendan back instead of standing there and taking it. He thought everything had changed now that everyone had seen what Brendan was: he thought it meant they could be together.

Brendan looked at him. The boy was extraordinary: the guts of him, coming here, pushing, giving. The naivete of him: didn't he see that Brendan's self control was stretched so tightly that it had to snap? Couldn't he see that he'd only be safe if he stayed away? Safe from Warren Fox. Safe from Brendan.

Stephen wouldn't leave it. He wouldn't turn and go. His hands were holding Brendan's face; their foreheads leaned against each other; in this moment Brendan didn't have to be the strong one. He ought to be: he ought to make Stephen want to run away and never look back. A punch would do it.

Brendan tried to see into him, to fathom why he was here when he knew the risks he ran. In the boy's eyes there was compassion, and Brendan couldn't see a difference between that and pity, and it made Brendan want to beat it out of him, and it made Brendan need to kiss him, and once he kissed him he couldn't stop.

Most of their clothes were gone before they reached the bed, and the rest as they grappled on it. It was months since Brendan had had him, but someone else had, hadn't they? Noah. The sudden thought made Brendan's stomach heave, and he retreated, got off the boy, stood up and looked down at him. There wasn't a blemish on Stephen's body; whatever Noah did with him, he didn't leave his mark.

Stephen looked puzzled, anxious; then he scrambled to the edge of the bed and put one hand on Brendan's hip and the other around the root of his cock, and opened his mouth. He did that for Noah, course he did. Brendan brushed him away, turned his back. A blowjob wasn't going to be enough to kill Brendan's thoughts: he needed to be in him, to take him completely, to have those strong limbs embracing him, to have no space between him and this boy where anything else could exist.

He felt in the back of the drawer for a pack of condoms; he ripped one open and rolled it on, his hands shaking. And then Stephen came to him, his body pressed against Brendan's back, his tongue running along Brendan's shoulder and turning into a wet kiss at the nape of his neck.

Brendan unwrapped the boy's arms from around his belly and turned to face him, and grabbed his arse and crushed their hips together, and clamped his mouth over Stephen's, and _felt_ him moan as his tongue went in.

Both men cried out as they hit the bed, Stephen winded as Brendan fell onto him. Brendan spat onto his fingers, and Stephen twisted his legs up and around Brendan's back and tilted his pelvis up, and Brendan found his hole and felt it contract around his fingers, and knew that Noah had felt this too. Stephen gasped, and finally Brendan forgot anyone and anything but him as he drove his cock, painful and desperate, deep inside the body of his lover.

It was chaotic. They were frantic but unmatched. Stephen was pulling Brendan closer and deeper, his arms and legs grasping him tightly; Brendan needed the freedom to pull out as well as push in, and he had to prise Stephen's legs looser to let it happen. Eventually their bodies remembered each other, and took over, and got lost in each other like they always had ever since that first time when everything was new.

After Brendan sat up to wrap the condom in a tissue and drop it on the floor, he turned back to see Stephen spreadeagled, shiny with sweat, eyes shut, skin blotchy from exertion, his diaphragm heaving, his ribs thrown into jagged relief with every exhalation. His thighs were wide apart, and Brendan took hold of them and closed them together, then lay down on top of him, his face resting on Stephen's chest, his weight making the boy's breaths shallow.

Stephen ran the fingers of one hand through Brendan's hair, gently, again and again, and with the other hand he stroked his back. As if Stephen was the strong one. As if.

Brendan roused himself after a while and lifted his head, and closed his mouth over the boy's collar bone. Smooth skin covered the delicate curve of the bone fleshlessly, and Brendan sucked at it slowly, imagining the walls of the tiny subcutaneous blood vessels resisting then surrendering, and the blood flooding out of them towards the surface to colour the skin with a perfect bruise. Stephen complained now and again with a whimper, and once or twice Brendan had to use his teeth to teach him not to wriggle; but he never stopped stroking Brendan's back.

He took him from behind after that, Stephen on all fours rocking against him. The room was dark and yet somehow the skin of Stephen's back gleamed, and his messed-up hair shone. As Brendan's fingers dug hard into his hips, Stephen panted and swore and called Brendan's name.

Brendan came first, then rolled the boy onto his back. Stephen was ready to burst, and Brendan gripped the base of his cock tightly to slow him, and took him into his mouth, and growled in his throat as he swallowed him. He looked at his lover's face after he came, and had never seen anything so beautiful. Stephen's cock was spent now, and vulnerable, and Brendan licked it clean and kissed the inside of his thighs.

They lay face to face and smiled at each other in a kind of bafflement, and kissed sleepily until Stephen's head lolled, and then Brendan kissed him again more tenderly than he ever could when the boy was awake. Then Brendan slept too, Stephen's head heavy on his shoulder.

It was still dark when Brendan woke. Stephen was gone. His clothes were still there though, or most of them. Brendan pulled on a pair of boxers and a T-shirt, and then Stephen reappeared, similarly dressed.

"Where the fuck you been?"

"Toilet." Stephen grinned. "Miss me, did you?"

"Cheryl see you?"

"No. Don't think she's come home. Anyway it doesn't matter now, does it?"

"Don't it?" Brendan stared at him, at that face that had such power over him. That face, that was only safe if Brendan was done with him so no-one would have a reason to hurt him.

"No, cos we're together now, it doesn't matter who knows about us." Stephen stepped towards Brendan, and then...

And then Brendan was in the kitchen. He could taste vomit, and could see it spattered in the steel sink. He turned the tap on to chase it away, and stood watching the stream of water as it spiralled down the plughole. Something had happened.

He was holding a wad of paper towels in his hand. Okay. Okay. He held them under the cold water for a few seconds, then turned off the tap and went back to his bedroom.

He found Stephen sitting on the floor behind the door, his back against the wall, his eyes lowered.

"Up you get, Stephen. Let's take a look at you."

No response. Brendan knelt down in front of him, and Stephen shrank away.

"No." His voice was a whisper.

"It's okay, it's just water, it won't sting." He pushed the hair away from Stephen's forehead and dabbed at the blood oozing from a cut there, and remembered tripping the boy up as he made for the door, and remembered his head catching on the door handle as he fell. "Good lad."

Stephen's lip was bleeding badly. Brendan made him spit the blood into the paper towels, then wiped his mouth with the last clean corner of them. There was a smear of dried blood on the back of Brendan's left hand, and he remembered landing that first blow that sent the boy flying, and he remembered the cry of pain and shock.

He dropped the bloody mess onto the condoms and tissues on the floor by the bed, then took Stephen by the wrists and hauled him to his feet. The momentum carried him into Brendan's arms, and he held him there for a minute, his mouth against Stephen's hair, until the boy came to his senses and struggled free and started grabbing the rest of his clothes from the floor.

"Stephen. You don't have to go, you're in no fit state. Look, sleep it off, yeah? At least wait til it's light." It wasn't safe for a young lad to be on the streets at this time of night. "Get your head down for a bit."

Brendan took the clothes out of Stephen's hands and pulled back the bed cover. Stephen seemed to have no fight left, and got back into bed. Brendan got in beside him, and the boy curled into a ball, his head against Brendan's side.

Brendan didn't sleep, but Stephen did: Brendan heard his breathing deepen, and felt the tension leave his body.

He woke him when it was getting light outside, and told him to get dressed. Neither man spoke after that, until as he stood at the front door watching Stephen head for the steps, Brendan called after him, "Put your hood up. There's a good lad."

Next time he saw him was in the office at the club. Both of them: Stephen and Noah. Turned out, Stephen had lied to Noah about what had happened last night, told him that Brendan had hit him because he refused to sleep with him. The boy looked broken, not just physically: the life had gone out of him. Only when his eyes pleaded with Brendan to back up his story, did Brendan see that he still had his instinct for survival. But it was Noah he was fighting to keep.

It would be days at least before Stephen would let Noah get his hands on him again, though. The bruises on Stephen's body weren't all marks of violence, they were evidence of sex, and he surely wouldn't risk Noah seeing them. Noah wouldn't be able to tell that before Stephen's lip was split, his mouth was already swollen from kisses; but the imprints of Brendan's fingers couldn't be explained away, branding his thighs and muddying the edges of his tattoo, and nor could the lovebite on his collar bone. So at least for now, Brendan wouldn't have to lie awake at night imagining them fucking in the flat next door. That was all the consolation there was.

"I don't love you any more, Brendan."

Alone again, Brendan hurled his cup at the wall, where it shattered into fragments.

:::::::

"That's great though, Brendan. That you decided to come out, you know? After all these years."

"_Great?_ Yeah, ain't it just."

"It is though, isn't it?" Macca had spent the past twelve months wondering if Brendan and Ste had got together properly after he'd come back home; this was his chance to find out. "Ste must be pleased anyhow."

Hearing that name made Brendan catch his breath. His knuckles whitened as he gripped the arm of the sofa.

"What's Stephen got to do with it, hm?"

"I thought you and him... If you're out, you can be with him without - "

"Without what? What the fuck are you talking about, Macca?"

Macca got up and moved behind the chair so that he had a head start if he needed to run.

"Without you having to keep him quiet."

Brendan stood.

"Got it all worked out, ain't you? So what makes you think I'm with Stephen?"

"I know you, Bren. You're not gonna just let someone go that you love."

Brendan lunged towards him. Macca ran, but Brendan caught him before he reached the door and slammed him against it.

"You been talking to him?" Brendan felt a wave of shame at the thought of what Stephen could say about him. "What's he been telling you?"

"No, I swear. I saw you, didn't I? Last November, I saw the way you looked at him. I saw it, Brendan."

Brendan let go of him and took a step back.

"Yeah, well, you're wrong. I've never loved anyone."


	8. Chapter 8

Their row must have given Macca a scare, because he'd escaped to his bedroom as soon as Brendan let him go, and then a few minutes later he'd left the flat without a word, more than an hour before he needed to leave for work.

As soon as he was alone, Brendan homed in on the bottle of Jameson's that Macca had picked up for him the day before. It was only early afternoon, but fuck it: he poured a glassful and sank it in a couple of gulps. The rapid burn in his throat reminded him that he was alive.

He hadn't missed drinking when he was in prison, to his surprise. Even if it had been offered to him he wouldn't have indulged, just like he'd steered clear of all the pills that got traded in there; he'd even turned down the antidepressants that the prison doctor wanted to prescribe for him. It had been tempting, the idea of taking something that would take the edge off, but he couldn't afford to. You had to keep your wits about you, keep your guard up, because you never knew what was around the corner or who you could trust. For a while he'd shared a cell, and in the nights when you couldn't sleep, there was a kind of intimacy between you and your cellmate, out of sight on the other bunk, that drew from you confidences you shouldn't share. Brendan knew he'd given away things that he shouldn't have; the guy had looked out for him and when there was hostility all around you, you found yourself clinging to what passed for friendship in the darkness. Brendan regretted it in the cold light of day, because knowledge was power and he'd given it away; but how much worse would it have been if his judgement had been eroded by alcohol or drugs? It had been safer to stay clean. Safer, but harder, because he'd had nothing to soften the pain of what came into his head, day after day, night after night.

Brendan realised he was hungry again. He poured another whiskey, and put a handful of ice in it this time because it would slow him down, and he knew he was going to drink the rest of the bottle before tonight, and he knew he ought to pace himself.

He opened the fridge: there wasn't much in there for him, so he got out a couple of eggs and fried them, and heated up a tin of beans, and heaped them onto a pile of toast. _Wholemeal _toast. What the fuck was wrong with white bread? Must be Liam's influence – Macca never used to have brown bread in the house. When these lads got boyfriends, they always seemed to pick the kind of fella that wanted to change them. Stephen was the same when he got with that Noah, suddenly eating salad and drinking wine and poncing around with napkins and the right fork, when really, Noah should have thanked his lucky stars that he had that boy just the way he was.

Stephen didn't need to change his manners and pretend to be something he wasn't, when what he was – the argumentative, gutsy little chancer – was enough to make any man burn with the need to have him. He didn't need to change his style, when his pick-and-mix, hit-and-miss choices made him look like a council estate boy who'd never had the time or the money or the confidence to try to look cool, because that was what his life was like, and so what? He was good enough how he was, good enough to make your balls ache and your heart thump when he put his best shirt on for you, or when you caught sight of him in the street looking from a distance like a kid skiving school, slouching along in a shapeless jacket a size too big on him.

He was good enough in his Chez Chez uniform. Irresistible. Right at the beginning when you were both at work, he'd catch you staring at that backside of his, and he'd give you that look, and next thing you knew you were in the toilets, fucking him against the wall in one of the narrow cubicles, your hands inside his T-shirt gripping him under his arms, his black trousers hanging off one ankle, his feet braced on the wall behind you; his hands in your hair. You'd have to catch his mouth with yours so you could swallow the noises he made. And you'd shudder to a climax, and then you'd bin the condom and zip up and buckle up and wash your hands, and you'd glance at him and he'd still be fumbling to get his clothes back on, and you knew he was under your skin, and you'd walk away. And then you'd stop in the doorway and go back to him because you had to kiss him again, and kiss him again, knowing you shouldn't, but knowing you couldn't _not._

Stephen hadn't needed to change his body either, like that boyfriend of his had wanted him to. Sure it suited him, a bit of muscle, a bit of substance, but there was nothing wrong with him before when he was all angles and bones, and arms that felt like they might snap, and you could pick him up and carry him.

All Brendan had wanted to change about him was, when Stephen had started loving him, he'd needed him to stop. And then in the end, he had.

More whiskey. More ice.

Brendan took his meal and his drink into the front room. He put the television on and flicked through the channels, but there was nothing that stood a chance of distracting him from the thoughts in his head. He knelt on the floor and searched through the piles of dvds stacked beside the telly; eventually he threw _Road to Perdition_ into the machine, and sat back on the sofa with his plate on a cushion on his lap.

The food and the film did the trick. Between them they absorbed his attention, until he finished eating and found that the film alone wasn't enough, so he paused it and went back to the kitchen. He put the last of the ice in his glass, and refilled the ice cube tray from the tap, although he was fairly sure that by the time it was frozen, he would have settled for drinking the Jameson's straight up.

He took the bottle with him, and restarted the film.

As he drank, Brendan felt his brain beginning to slow, its synapses lagging; the plot of the movie made less sense and he could no longer keep track of its tangle of loyalties and betrayals. All his thoughts were becoming unfocussed, except for the one that he needed relief from, which now stood out, cutting vivid and clear through the gathering fog. _Him._

Brendan poured and necked another shot, needing the searing in his throat to grab his attention, but it had lost its sting: you got numb to some kinds of pain, apparently.

:::::::

Next day, Brendan slept late. There was no point in getting up early because it was Saturday, so he wouldn't be able to go and watch his sons on their way to school.

He was vaguely aware of Macca padding around, and sat up when he smelt coffee. He stretched. Sleeping on this sofa wasn't doing his back any good, and he had a hangover.

Macca had been relieved, when he got in from work late last night, that Brendan was asleep – or at least pretending to be – because he'd been worried that his aggressive mood from earlier in the day would have been compounded by drinking. This morning, Macca's tactic was to act like nothing had happened. He knew how Brendan tended to put incidents like that behind him, and bringing it up would only aggravate him again. It hadn't taken long for the old patterns to reassert themselves and for Macca to learn again the line he had to walk. All that was missing was the sex.

"Morning." Macca handed Brendan a mug of coffee, which he accepted with a grunt. "I'm off down the shops, Bren. Anything you want?"

Brendan glanced at the empty whiskey bottle on the coffee table.

"Surprise me."

Macca studied Brendan. He looked rough: there were dark circles under his eyes, and his beard was unkempt. But the swellings he'd arrived with had gone down, and the bruises had almost faded away, and his rumpled T-shirt exposed arms which were huge with new muscle. Macca had to look away; he shouldn't be thinking what he was thinking.

"Got any plans today, Brendan?"

"No."

"There's a barber up the road if you wanna get a haircut. Just before the bookies on the corner."

"What, you saying I'm scruffy now?" Brendan knew it was true, and he needed to get a grip.

"Just a bit, aye. Bet you'd feel better though, more like yourself." Macca headed for the door. "See you later."

Brendan finished his coffee, showered and dressed, found some painkillers and swallowed them, then wolfed down a couple of bowls of cereal and left the flat.

It was an old fashioned barber, cheap as chips, but they did a pretty decent job on his hair and gave his beard a trim. The kid had been right: Brendan felt more confident, less of an object of curiosity.

On an impulse, he headed off towards his house. _Eileen's _house he should call it now, he supposed, even though he still paid the rent; he'd made sure Cheryl had kept up the payments to her and the boys while he was inside, although if Eileen had any sense she'd have been putting some rainy day money aside out of what he'd been sending her ever since she threw him out.

It was a long walk. As he started to get close, his pace slowed; he scanned ahead of him, alert for anyone he might know. The beard was enough of a disguise, he hoped, that if someone spotted him from far off he could disappear before they were sure it was him.

Brendan came to the road and stopped at the small block of flats on the corner, from where he had a good view of his house across the road, and where he had a doorway to retreat to if anyone came along. He'd only been there a minute when a bunch of lads wandered up the street with a football and banged on the front door of the house. Declan opened the door and they all hung around outside for a while, and then Eileen came out with Padraig and exchanged a few words with the boys, before they set off in opposite directions. Eileen and Padraig headed away from Brendan – probably she was taking him with her to the shops or to visit her mum – and Declan and the lads came towards where Brendan was standing. He dodged into the flats and watched them go by. They were all under-dressed for November, but they were obviously going to the park and would warm up playing football, and in any case, kids never felt the cold.

Brendan debated whether to follow Padraig or Declan, or if he should just give it up altogether now that he'd seen them. In the end he decided to trail his older son: he had an idea that he might get out of Belfast once he got his new credit card on Monday, so he wasn't sure when he'd see either of them again, and something about the sight of Declan with his mates sparked an undefined memory in Brendan, which he thought might become more solid if he went and watched them play.

He was pretty sure he knew where they were headed, so he hung back and made his way there slowly, skirting around the edge of the park until he spotted where they were.

There were two matches going on. One looked like a training session; the players were probably students, and there were a number of people watching along either side of the pitch. Beyond that game, Declan and his mates had set up. There were about seven of them a side, and they were in an assortment of shirts with nothing on them to denote who was on which team, so all the boys had to go on was their decision when they'd divided themselves up and their knowledge of each other.

Not much more than a year ago, he wouldn't have imagined he'd ever see Declan running around like he was now, never mind diving in to tackle another kid for the ball. Brendan hated himself for the way he'd got the money for that consultant – he felt a prickle of sweat on his forehead just thinking about how much worse it could have been if Cheryl had fallen more heavily when he'd robbed her – but the result was a good one at least for Declan. One inspired surgeon, one simple operation on his inner ear, and the kid had got himself a normal life.

Brendan stood near a group of people watching the adults' game, but his eyes were fixed on his son on the far side. There was a lot of to and fro, a bit of shoving, but even at this distance it was obvious it was friendly. And then Declan scored, a soaring kick from miles away that sliced into the goal an inch from the keeper's fingertips, and then his mates bundled onto him and their shouts of triumph cut through the winter air.

And that was the memory. A day in a park like this one but on the other side of the city. A bunch of schoolboys, some of them not much good at the game, Brendan included – teams were never his thing – but some of them who were completely into it. One of them, Malachy Fisher, scoring the winning goal in the final minute, a short angry kick sending the ball punching into the back of the net. And all of them running at him, elated, and Brendan getting there first and their bodies colliding, and somehow tasting the sweat on Malachy's neck. Disentangling from him when the other boys piled on. And when it had all died down and the whistle had gone, seeing the new lad, the one with the Derry accent, who'd kept out of the action during the match like he was sizing everyone up: seeing him going up to Malachy and shaking his hand like a man not a boy. And then walking back to the changing rooms, seeing that new lad, Peter, suddenly smile. And nothing made sense any more.

Brendan wanted to cheer Declan's goal, but he stopped himself, because what if the boy heard him and looked across?

Would it be so bad? Brendan's face was no longer the mess it had been when he left prison, and in any case Declan was old enough not to get freaked out by something like that. He must have heard by now that the charges had been false and that Brendan had been released, so it wouldn't be that much of a shock if he saw him. But Brendan hadn't spoken to him since the day he'd put him on a plane home to Belfast, and even in the car on the way to the airport they'd said nothing to each other about what Declan had found out about him the day before. He'd accepted it, hadn't he, that his father was gay? He'd seemed to anyway, with that hug that made Brendan's heart break at how much his terrible secrecy had cost him. But now that Declan had lived for a couple of months with that knowledge, he might have anything going on in his head: Eileen might have told him anything.

Brendan couldn't face him, not yet, not until he was back on his feet, back in control, back to being the kind of man a son would look up to regardless of who he slept with.

The game carried on, and Brendan walked away.


	9. Chapter 9

Macca didn't have to go to work on Sunday.

He watched Brendan working his way through a huge fried breakfast as they sat at the cramped square table in the kitchen. Somehow the room seemed smaller when Brendan was around; the whole flat did, come to think of it, and it was only tiny to start with. Even when he was in another room, Macca could sense his presence filling the place, and he was getting used to the feeling.

"I'll be off out in a bit, Bren. My nan's doing a roast."

Brendan nodded. He remembered Eileen's mother's Sunday dinners, and the way he could always tell if his wife had been badmouthing him to her by the way she put the food onto his plate – carefully and generously, or slapped on without ceremony like school dinners.

He impaled a rasher of bacon on his fork and waved it under Macca's nose.

"Want some?"

"Had mine earlier, didn't I."

"What, a bowl of _muesli_ was it? That ain't gonna put hairs on your chest, son."

"Saving myself for later, aren't I. You know what my nan's like, you come away stuffed." He paused. "You don't half eat a lot of crap though, Brendan. All that fried food, it can't be good for you."

"Aah, worried about me arteries are you? That's... sweet, really it is."

"I'm just saying."

"Yeah. Need fuel though, Macca, don't I? Didn't get a body like this eating rabbit food." He pushed up the sleeve of his shirt and flexed his muscles. "Feel that."

Macca didn't move.

"Fancy yourself, don't you."

"Don't _you_?" Brendan dropped his voice to an intimate growl and raised a suggestive eyebrow. "Go on, _feel_ it. You know you want to."

Macca swallowed. It was still there, the killer charm that could make you drop your guard and drop your pants if you didn't watch yourself. He didn't know if Brendan was seriously trying it on or just playing with him – he suspected it was the latter, because in the five nights he'd been here, Brendan had had plenty of opportunities to find his way to Macca's bedroom but never had – but he couldn't help smiling: he'd missed the old Brendan, and it was good to see him in a better mood.

He did what he was told, and gave Brendan's biceps a squeeze. The skin was cool and smooth, the muscle unyielding.

"Yeah, very impressive." Macca kept his tone light, mocking; but he felt himself flushing a little.

Brendan hadn't been sure, but he was now: he could have this boy again if he put his mind to it, boyfriend or no boyfriend. Love didn't mean a thing to these lads, did it? Or what passed for love: whatever they thought they felt, it wasn't real. A year ago, Macca _loved_ Brendan. Now, he _loved _Liam, but it would only take a few clever words and a gentle touch, and in a heartbeat he'd be on his back or on his knees. That wasn't love. You didn't betray someone you loved, you didn't look elsewhere while you were with them. Even if you were apart you couldn't abandon them, however much you wanted to, because they were always in your head.

He resumed eating his breakfast.

"So who's gonna be at your nan's then, Macca? You and who else?"

"Liam's coming. Dunno who else. Some of the family I expect." Macca knew that Eileen might be there, with both of her sons: his nan didn't know why he and Eileen had fallen out, but she was attempting to build bridges.

"_Liam_?" Meeting the family was he? Jesus, must be serious. "And the old girl's okay with that is she? You bringing a fella round?"

"I know, who'da thought."

"I musta been away a long time." Brendan wondered if his mother-in-law knew about him now. Probably; Eileen would have had to tell her, now that Declan knew, even if she hadn't told her before.

This thing Brendan did was becoming common currency, and it had got far beyond any chance he had of containing it. And anyone who heard about it would think they knew what it meant about him; and the version of himself that he presented to them would always come second to what they thought they knew. He was just going to have to front it out from now on. He didn't have a choice.

"I don't think she's ever been homophobic, Brendan. It's just her generation, isn't it, the way they were brought up. She got her head around me being gay before my mum and dad did, as it goes."

"Bet she wouldn't have if she knew what you got up to with her favourite daughter's husband."

"Yeah, well, Eileen's kept quiet about that, so..."

Brendan finished his breakfast and pushed his plate away.

"I need you to keep quiet too, Macca."

"I always have. You know that."

"I mean about me being here. I don't want anyone knowing, okay, it's just... it's better if they don't."

Brendan still needed time to get his head straight. The last thing he wanted was for news of his whereabouts to start leaking out. He'd have Eileen hammering on the door, calling him all kinds for breaking his promise not to let Declan find out that he was queer. Declan would likely be mad at him too, for being in the same town but hiding away from him. The grapevine being what it was, he wouldn't be surprised if Cheryl turned up too, wanting to drag him back to the club; and Brendan would bet his life that Warren Fox would love to know where to find him. And fuck knew what Stephen would think if he knew he had been living with Macca. Not that it mattered what Stephen thought.

"I know, Bren. You said, when you first got here. Nobody'll hear about it from me."

"What about Liam? He knows I'm here. If he's cosying up to the family, what's he gonna say, hm?"

"He won't say anything."

"Guarantee that, can you?"

"I'll talk to him, make sure he knows."

"Good. Good, because if word starts getting around that I been staying here, your boyfriend might just find out about me and you."

"Are you threatening me? Jesus, Brendan, you're unbelievable - " He stopped as they heard the flat door open. "That'll be him."

Macca left to greet Liam.

Brendan stood up and put his plate and mug in the sink.

He had met Liam once, the day after he got out of prison, when he'd first gone to see if he could have a bed for the night at Macca's. It was less than a week ago, but it felt like an age. He tried to remember what he'd thought on meeting him: Liam had stepped out of the bathroom in just a towel, and normally that would have put Brendan at an advantage because of the guy's embarrassment, but it hadn't been like that. Liam had seemed sophisticated, secure in his right to be there. Brendan had been an interloper, rain-soaked, in ill-fitting clothes; battered and hurting from all the assaults; hungry and tired and with nowhere to go.

He needed now to overturn the first impression that Liam must have had of him, to assert himself as what he was, someone to be reckoned with.

Brendan's face was much less of a mess than it had been at the beginning of the week, and since his trip to the barber yesterday his hair and beard looked sharper. He was wearing a shirt, but it needed ironing, and he knew that the black T-shirt he had on underneath would show off his physical power, so he discarded the creased shirt.

He squared his shoulders, and walked into the front room.

Macca and Liam were kissing. It was ostentatious, as if Macca was making a point, standing on tiptoe in his bare feet to cling around the neck of his boyfriend, who had a hold of his arse. The boy was still in the shorts and vest he'd slept in. Liam was wearing desert boots and chinos – chinos for fucksake – what kind of man wore chinos, _ever_, never mind in fucking November? Smart-casual prick. He had on a nice coat though, Brendan would say that for him.

There was something vaguely disturbing about the sight of the two of them; Brendan couldn't put his finger on it. Liam was tall – about Brendan's height – and well into his thirties. Macca in contrast looked insubstantial, as if he'd have no defence if Liam turned on him. It didn't look right. Stephen might have been a puny little fucker at the beginning, but at least there wasn't more than maybe three or four inches' difference in their heights. At least Stephen could look Brendan in the eye, like he was a match for him.

Brendan leaned against the doorframe, arms folded, head tilted to one side.

"Don't mind me."

Liam looked startled and more or less dropped Macca, before he composed himself and smiled. It was a nice smile, which Brendan remembered now from the first time they'd met; kind of bashful.

"Sorry. God, sorry, I didn't realise you were there." He had a soft Belfast accent.

"Not a problem."

Macca put his arms around Liam's middle inside his coat, and laid his face against his chest.

"You remember Liam, don't you Bren?"

Macca's dark eyes had the same sly, challenging look that had first made Brendan think that the lad might have something he wanted. The little bastard wanted him to be jealous, didn't he, but he should have known by now that it wasn't a good idea to try to be clever.

Liam prised Macca's arms off his waist, giving his shoulders an affectionate squeeze before going to Brendan and extending a hand to him.

"Nice to see you again, Brendan. You joining us for lunch?"

Brendan shook his hand firmly.

"Me invite got lost in the post."

"Ah. Awkward."

"Yeah."

There was a silence, which Macca broke.

"You're early, Liam, I haven't even had a shower yet. D'you wanna go and wait in the car? I'll get some clothes on and meet you down there." He had recognised in Brendan a calculating stillness that used to be a sign of trouble, and he wanted to get his boyfriend away from him.

Brendan looked at Macca.

"That's okay, son, you go and get ready, and me and Liam here can get acquainted." He enjoyed Macca's discomfort. "Run along, there's a good lad."

Macca couldn't think of an argument, so he admitted defeat and went off for a shower.

Brendan sat down on the sofa and crossed his feet on the coffee table. Liam took the armchair.

"So, how's it going, Brendan? Must be tough, getting used to being out and about again after..."

"How long has this... _thing_... with Macca been going on for?"

"What? Oh, um, well, we met a year ago this month as it happens; met on a plane, it was when he was coming home – after he'd been staying with you in Chester, funnily enough."

Fucking hell, Macca hadn't wasted any time.

"You picked him up on the aeroplane? Classy."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Liam's relaxed demeanour was a little ruffled.

Brendan grinned at him.

"Only messing."

"Right. Anyhow we didn't start going out til the summer. He wasn't ready, after everything he'd been through, you know?"

It was clear that Liam didn't know that Brendan had been the _everything. _And it looked like Macca hadn't jumped straight into bed with him after all, which pleased Brendan for no reason he cared to examine.

He changed tack, asked Liam about himself. Apparently he was an architect, worked out of offices in town. Had just bought himself a place on the Malone Road: must be doing alright for himself then. Macca had fallen on his feet.

Both men watched as Macca slunk out of the bathroom and into the bedroom to get dressed.

"So how long you thinking of staying now, Brendan?" Liam asked. "Got any plans to move on?"

"Cramping your style, am I?"

"Have you got a problem with me or something?"

Brendan looked at him evenly.

"Course not. The kid can do what he likes."

"He's not a kid."

"He's my nephew though, so."

Liam stood up.

"So you're being the protective uncle."

"Looks like it."

"And that's all it is?"

Brendan removed his feet from the coffee table and slowly rose to face Liam. Macca hadn't told his boyfriend that Brendan was gay – that's what he'd said to Brendan, and Brendan believed him – so it looked like Liam was working things out for himself. Maybe it was better not to push him: it was bad enough everyone knowing what he was, without adding screwing his nephew into the cauldron of gossip.

Macca returned from his bedroom to find the two men face to face.

"Everything alright?" Fuck, Brendan must be stirring things: he had that energy about him that usually meant he was making trouble.

Liam looked more puzzled than anything. Macca held out his hand to him, and Liam came to him and took it.

"You wanna get going?" he asked Macca.

"Aye." Macca picked up his packed bag from the floor by the door, and turned to Brendan. "We're going to Liam's after, Bren, so I won't be back til tomorrow afternoon before work."

They went to leave, and Brendan watched as they paused in the doorway to kiss – at Macca's instigation, naturally. Smug little bugger, off for a family dinner then a night with his perfect boyfriend, and rubbing Brendan's nose in it. He was asking for a slap, but that wasn't an option, so...

"I'll be gone by then."

"What?" Fleetingly, Macca looked gutted. "Where you going?"

"South. Dublin, or..." Brendan didn't have a plan. "Soon as I get my credit card in the morning, I'll be leaving you lovebirds to it."

Macca hadn't been prepared for this. What if this was it? This time last week he had believed he was over Brendan, but these unexpected few days with him had confused him. Macca had a boyfriend who loved him like Brendan never had, and who treated him well; they dated like couples were meant to; they'd met each other's families. They had a good sex life: Liam was great, really great. Macca always felt safe with him. He never felt his fingers begin to go numb from the tightness of a burning grip on his wrists; never felt a thrill of panic as the hand squeezing his throat stayed there a little too long. Never felt so possessed by the lover who filled his body that his own identity slipped away. Never felt the terror of plunging from the top of a cliff, and not knowing until it happened whether the man who'd pushed him would let him break or catch him as he fell.

"You coming, babe?" Liam tugged gently at Macca's hand.

Macca nodded.

"Bye then, Bren."

"You kids have fun."

Brendan knew he had hurt him: he could see it in his averted eyes. But it was the boy's own fault for letting him back in.

That was what happened to people who got attached, who let their feelings rule them and grew to need some other person to make them feel complete. They laid themselves open to pain, and you could bet your life the pain would creep into any crack it found. That was why you needed to build a wall around yourself, and watch out for anyone who came to chip away at it, and make sure they never made it through.


	10. Chapter 10

The rest of Sunday crawled by. Brendan would have liked to get out of the flat, find a pub and pass a few hours watching and listening and maybe engaging in a bit of conversation like he used to do, back in the days when the prospect of going home to Eileen made the skin of his body feel tight. Pubs were a refuge back then: not the bars and clubs where he did business and had to be constantly alert to the nuances around him; but old men's pubs, the kind of place where the pressure was off and the cast of characters never varied. Sometimes, you just needed things to feel familiar.

It was out of the question, though. It was unlikely he could go into any bar in Belfast and not have someone recognise him, and mention him in passing to someone else; and he knew he was being paranoid, but he still didn't want to be found and dragged back to his real life.

He made a quick trip out to the shops, and came back with some beers and a microwave chilli and, half believing what Macca had said to him this morning about the amount of crap he ate, a bag of salad to go with it. Tomorrow, Brendan would go to the bank and collect his replacement credit card – if it wasn't there waiting for him at last, he would refuse to leave until they got their bloody act together – and then he'd be gone. He hadn't come to Ireland to be a prisoner again, and if he went back home to the South he wouldn't feel like he had to hide out any more. All he had to do was get through the rest of today on his own.

Fuck Macca. Fuck him and his Sunday dinner at his nan's with his boyfriend, and his Sunday night at his boyfriend's trendy apartment. Fuck Liam too. Brendan would be glad to leave them to it: he was fine being alone.

It was just, aloneness had a different quality to it on a Sunday, burdensome and portentous. Waiting for your dad to get home from a day going from pub to pub. Or wondering what was in store at school the next day, who'd be there, who you'd have to avoid, who would make you feel stuff that made your guts twist with the fear of what you were. Or waiting for your wife to come back downstairs from putting the kids to bed, her hair soft and wavy from the steam in the bathroom, her skin perfumed, the desire in her eyes already shaded with the expectation of rejection.

Brendan opened a beer and dug out his phone, the one Macca had sorted out for him as his own was still in an evidence bag in a police station somewhere. He'd only used this one a couple of times, just to give the bank a piece of his mind; there was no-one he wanted to talk to. He looked at the time: two o'clock. Back at Chez Chez, the place would be getting busy about now, punters starting to drift in for a hair of the dog, and the music would be mellow. Maybe he should give Cheryl a call, find out how things were going. She'd been upset when she'd been on the phone to Macca the other day; Brendan had listened as Macca tried to reassure her that her brother would be okay. A quick call to her would put her mind at rest.

He found her name in his mobile's contacts. What would he say? What _could_ he say? She'd be full of questions, and the more he evaded, the more counter-productive it would become. _When are you coming home, Brendan?_ He couldn't answer that, even for himself, and Cheryl would be hurt by any answer that wasn't _Now._

He scrolled past Cheryl through the other names.

_Stephen._

Stephen might be at work now. Brendan imagined him nodding his head to the music as he served at the bar; counting out change into a customer's hand; giving them a smile if they remembered to stop talking to their mates for a second to say thank you. Or preoccupied with things going on in that head of his, in that life of his that Brendan sometimes felt he knew nothing of. Doing his job, collecting glasses, shifting crates, a neutral mask shielding his inner life.

_Call number._

Brendan held his breath as it rang.

"Hello?" His voice hit Brendan like a punch to the base of his throat. "Hello?" Stephen said again.

Brendan strained to hear the background sounds, to work out where he was. A running tap, he thought. Then a child's voice, must be Leah: "Who is it, daddy?"

He was at home then, in that run-down flat where they'd first gone to bed.

His voice was further away now as he gave up trying to hear who was calling: "I don't know, sweetheart, I think they've gone." And then the connection went dead.

Brendan threw the phone down onto the sofa beside him, and ran his hands through his hair, and rubbed at his eyes with his fists. Why the fucking hell had he called that number? To hear his voice, like some lovesick schoolgirl? Get a grip. Stephen was nothing to him any more: how could he be, when Brendan was nothing to Stephen? No, he was _worse_ than nothing to Stephen. To Stephen, he was Rae's killer.

:::::::

He was into his second week in this prison. He was trying to feel his way towards a way of coping with it, watching how older hands got through the days; trying to contain his temper, trying not to let his thoughts run away with him. Keeping a lid on his terror.

Visits were the most important moments you could have as an inmate. Mealtimes came second, a long way behind, but visits were what the men all seemed to live for. It was hard though. Agonising, seeing Cheryl doing her best to be positive for him, but so fragile beneath the surface that he found himself exhausted after their time was up, from his efforts to make her think he was okay.

As he walked into the visiting room and saw Cheryl waiting at one of the small tables, her curls absurdly piled on top of her head, her clothes a clashing mix of defiantly cheerful colours, Brendan felt a rush of love for her. Bad start: he'd been trying not to feel anything for anyone, because in here, even more than out there, emotions made you weak.

You weren't supposed to kiss your visitors, but the guards seemed to take a pragmatic view. They'd turn a blind eye to a kiss on the cheek, but step in if someone's girlfriend tried the kind of move where something could be passed from mouth to mouth. Brendan gave Cheryl a brotherly kiss, and chanced a quick hug, breaking away before the wardens got antsy.

"Alright sis?" He smiled as they sat down opposite each other.

"You look dreadful, Brendan."

"Cheers."

"Oh no, I mean, how long since you've had a shave? It's getting way past designer stubble," she teased, but then her face changed. "Oh god. Have they taken your razor away? Are they worried you might - ?"

"No. No, I'm growing me beard, is all. Fancied a change, okay?"

"But you've always had a tache, Bren. It's _you._"

"Not in here, Chez. This ain't me."

"Oh, Brendan." Her eyes flooded with tears, which she blinked away.

"Hey, hey, don't be getting upset. You're meant to be cheering me up." He squeezed her arm, and searched for a change of subject. "What's been going on at home? Not running me club into the ground I hope."

"Certainly not." Cheryl pulled herself together. "Business isn't great, but it's always a bit quiet before the students come back, so there's nothing for you to worry about."

"Foxy giving you any trouble?"

"Huh! I can handle him, don't you worry."

"And the staff? No problems there?"

"Nope, we're all trundling on."

"Good." Brendan waited for Cheryl to expand on her answer, but she didn't. "All under control then."

"It'll all still be there waiting for you when you get out."

"If."

"_When._"

It was _If_, whatever Cheryl wanted to believe; but there was no point distressing her again – Brendan couldn't bear it if she broke down.

"Anything been happening, aside from the club?" His question felt forced; he wasn't much of a one for smalltalk at the best of times, but everything else was too big for here and now.

Cheryl thought for a moment.

"Well, some of the kids organised a memorial for Rae, like a little service thing only it was outdoors, not in a church or anything, and they let off balloons for her. You should have been there, Bren, it was really touching, you know?"

"That's..."

"I'm an idiot! Oh love I'm sorry, that's the last thing I should be telling you about. Look at me, just rambling away as if - "

"It's okay. It's good that they... that her mates did that." He paused. "Musta hit them hard, losing her like that."

"I still can't believe it myself. Poor Ste, he's taken it hard."

"He okay?" Brendan heard the tightness in his own voice.

Cheryl hesitated, as if choosing her words for once.

"He made a speech."

"_Stephen_?"

"Yeah, wrote it himself and read it out in front of everyone."

"_Stephen_ did?"

Stephen, who struggled to read and write.

Brendan had figured out early on that Stephen wasn't stupid. He was shockingly under-educated, and Brendan hadn't hesitated to play on his insecurity about it, but he could be wily and astute. But he had a reading problem which had come to Brendan's notice the first time he'd given him a list for the cash & carry, and Stephen had told him he couldn't read his handwriting – the cheeky fuck – so he'd had to tell him what half the items were. There'd been an embarrassment there, a defensive bravado that was easy to see through. After that, Brendan would always read out the list to Stephen before he gave it to him, like he was just double-checking it for himself; well, it wasn't the lad's fault, was it, if he was dyslexic or whatever, so no point making it a big deal.

It was funny though, he had a knack for doing the rotas. Stephen would find a quiet corner and sit there with the charts on his lap, his hair flopping over his forehead, his tongue peeping out of the corner of his mouth in concentration. Then suddenly he'd finish it and smile, and go and get on with his next job, and Brendan would check and he'd have sorted it. If you'd told him that he'd taken a problem with a load of variables – the staff all with their different availabilities, the different numbers of people required for each shift depending on the time of day and the day of the week – and he'd solved it by the application of logic and mathematics and lateral thinking, he'd have looked at you like you were talking Latin. Maybe Brendan should have told him anyway.

"_Stephen_ did?"

"Yes, and it was a lovely little speech," Cheryl answered quietly. "Honestly, you'd have been so proud of him."

"He's a good lad."

"And he's in bits, Bren. I'm sure when he calms down he's gonna realise it wasn't you."

Brendan felt an icy blade slide into his spine.

"What wasn't me?"

"It wasn't you that killed Rae. Ste's all over the place, he's not seeing straight, so it's not surprising that - "

"He thinks I did it?"

"Well, yes, but so does nearly everyone. I mean not me and Lyns, obviously, cos we know you, but - "

"Stephen knows me. He knows me. He knows I'd never hurt a woman, he knows that. He knows me."

"I'm sorry, love. Brendan? It'll be okay, he'll come around, once the shock wears off he'll see sense, and I'm sure Amy'll talk to him and - "

"Amy? Jesus."

"Amy doesn't think you did it, she can see it, so she'll make Ste see, and when you get out, you and him can have a talk, maybe start afresh - "

"Fuck him."

"Brendan!"

"_Talk_ to him? Why would I wanna do that? I'm well out of that, believe me."

He got up and strode to the exit, and got taken back to his cell. The walls seemed to lean in towards him, and he slumped onto the bed, his head spinning. If even the people closest to him didn't believe him, he had no hope at all.

:::::::

Brendan was first in line when the bank opened its doors on Monday morning, and finally his new credit card was ready for him to collect. He signed for it, then went back to the flat.

As Macca had spent the night at Liam's, Brendan had slept in his bed instead of on the sofa, and had had a better night's sleep. The bed was comfortable, and there'd been a certain comfort, too, in having the scent of the lad around him. It brought with it a kind of nostalgia for this same place in that year when Brendan had taken possession of the boy and the bed, and used them both. At the time, it had felt complicated, living with Eileen, fucking her nephew, aware that Macca's feelings were getting out of control, but carrying it on anyway because the sex was good and the process of picking up men for one-off encounters disgusted him even more than this affair did. Christ, he remembered once he'd battered Macca for using that word, _affair._

Complicated, then. Looking back though, it had been a walk in the park.

Brendan started to make the bed, but stopped. Let Macca see that it had been slept in. He imagined him coming home and seeing it and curling up in the hollow Brendan had made and, fresh from his perfect boyfriend's designer bed, getting off on the imprint that Brendan had made on his body as well as on his mattress.

He began to round up his possessions and to pack them into his holdall. There was too much stuff to fit in, since he'd bought some new clothes here in Belfast. He binned some of the things he'd worn in prison – he never wanted to see them again – and decided in the end to leave one or two things here. Obviously he would need to come back to the city to see his kids again before he returned to England, so he might as well call in on Macca. He would pick up his things and pay back the money he owed him at the same time.

He took a chance that he wouldn't want his suit on his trip across the border, so he hung it up in Macca's wardrobe, bundling what must be Liam's clothes out of the way to do so. He put the paperwork from prison and a few other bits and pieces in a carrier bag in a drawer, then double checked that he'd got everything he needed. He found his passport in a side pocket of his holdall, and there was something else in there too, in a clear plastic bag in which his property had been returned to his solicitor by the police. He'd already taken out his cross and his cash and whatever else, so all that was left in there was his bracelet. He held the heavy metal cuff between his fingers, studying its hard, dull sheen.

Brendan had bought it for himself on an impulse; he'd been in a jewellery shop in Chester looking for a present for Cheryl to cheer her up after the safe had been robbed soon after the club had opened, and he'd noticed it, the strength of it, the solidity.

He remembered the eyes of the boy on it, first time he wore it. _See something you like?_ Made him blush – even back then in the times before Stephen knew what he wanted, it wasn't much of a challenge, but Jesus, it was a pleasure. _It's mint, that,_ and a slight smile, a change from the customary pout, his lips parted like they were made to be.

Brendan remembered a night in a bar. A _gay_ bar. A date, you'd call it, if you were into that sentimental bullshit. The boy, careful and cautious but full of wanting it to mean something. Needing it to. His hand reaching out across the table and across the chasm, touching your hand, his fingertips brushing the metal cuff, and although his touch was brief – already he knew the risks he took – you wanted to escape. And you did. You touched his hand, briefer even than he'd touched yours, like an offering, an apology for what you were about to do. And then you ran.

He remembered a stolen afternoon, a feverish fuck, his hands on the pillow either side of the boy's head. The cries Stephen made as he writhed and thrashed and abandoned himself to the sensations. His limbs flailing, and his fingers finding the bracelet on Brendan's wrist and hooking inside it, and staying there in their collapse, delicately trapped together, his knuckles against Brendan's pulse.

Brendan was going to put it on. He still liked it, didn't he? There was nothing different about it, now that it wouldn't join them any more.

He stuffed the cuff back into the plastic bag and shoved it into the drawer.

He had another quick look around, scribbled a note for Macca, and left.

Brendan caught a bus to the station, and bought a ticket for the next train to Dublin.


	11. Chapter 11

There was something about Dublin that still felt like home. The sense of it had begun for him as the train crossed the border, and had become more definite as it neared the city.

Brendan had spent many more years away from the place than in it, but it was the place of his birth and so it was in his bones, he supposed. Not that his times here were all good ones – not by any means – and as he sat with a plate of Irish stew in a pub in the centre of town, he reflected that the good times had been few and far between.

The best and the worst had been the time when the kids were young, and they'd all moved down here to escape a little local difficulty Brendan was having in Belfast. Eileen hated it: she missed her mates and her family, but the city was still going through a boom period so it hadn't taken her long to discover the shops and find herself some consolation in them. Padraig had been fine, he always was. Declan's balance problem had begun to show itself, though, so it was tough for him, fitting in in a new school, but he'd dealt with it, adopted the local accent, adapted. He had a survival instinct, that lad, but the funny thing was, once they moved back up to Belfast, he held on to the Dublin accent that he'd acquired. It was what Brendan had done when he'd been shipped up to the North to live as a kid: he'd been teased for his accent, but his reaction had been to hold onto it like grim death, out of pride and bloody-mindedness, and the bullies could go fuck themselves. He was proud of Declan for doing exactly the same, years later, as if the attitude had passed in the genes from father to son; but it terrified him too. That was what the deal was with being a father, you feared for what your children would become.

The bed and breakfast place he'd been staying at was on the Northside. It wasn't just because it was cheaper – he could afford to stay wherever he liked now that he had his credit card back – but because it was where he was from, the part of the city that had eluded gentrification, and where the kids still looked like he had looked. It reminded him why he was hungry.

He'd done business on both sides of town over the years, not just when he was living here but also on trips when he worked with Danny Houston, and even before then. It was always more of a pleasure separating people from their money on the Southside, though. Middle class pricks were asking for it.

Brendan did a lot of business trips back in the day. Always seemed to be on the way somewhere, London, Manchester, Liverpool, Belfast, Dublin; across to the Atlantic coast sometimes, too, and to the continent now and then. Eileen hated him being away so much, but she liked the money, more and more as he graduated from being a runner when they were still teenagers, him and Eileen, with a young baby to care for, to cutting deals of his own and going in with the big boys. She used to ask him, when he came home with presents and flowers and not much to say for himself, _Are you seeing someone else, Bren? You got another girl?_ Or she'd say, and he could tell she'd been brooding on it and letting her imagination run wild, _If it's one night stands, you better not bring no diseases to this house. And if it's someone you like more than me, tell me, I'd rather know. _And he'd look her in the eye, be straight with her: _There's no other woman, never has been. Why would I want some tart when I got you?_ And she would see that he was telling the truth, and say _Sorry_, and break down, and he'd hold her and tell her, _You're my girl, okay? _and she would cry it all out and fall asleep in his arms.

There were women though, only not how Eileen meant. Brendan liked to work alone, but sometimes it paid to have a girl in the car when he was carrying a lot of gear or a lot of cash. If they were stopped at the border or driving off the ferry, it was amazing what difference a pretty girl could make. Fucking idiots for a pair of tits and some fluttering eyelashes, men were. Sometimes it took more than that though. One time, he'd come over on the ferry to Belfast and they got stopped, and the customs guy must have got out of bed on the wrong side because he was a right fastidious bastard, and in the end the girl – Danny's piece at the time, she was, Veronica – went off with him somewhere and, whatever it was that she did, when she got back in the car the fella waved them through.

She was the best of them, Veronica. Got a buzz out of it all. Their best trick, when she was his sidekick, was to stage a domestic, a flaming festering row that would have the copper or the patrolman or the customs guy rolling his eyes to Brendan, _mano a mano_, and letting him drive on with a shrug that said, _We've all been there, mate._

A couple of times, it hadn't been drugs they were shipping, but weapons, and Veronica was cooler under that pressure than Brendan was. He'd been convinced that the sweat on his forehead would give them away, but the girl was breezy and unfazed. It was different with drugs: people chose to put the stuff up their noses or onto their tongues or into their veins. But nobody volunteered to get shot.

She was a tricky bitch, Veronica, but you could trust her back then when the chips were down. It got difficult between them, though, in the end. They used to share a room sometimes when they had to stop over somewhere, or a cabin on the night ferry, and she started to ask him why he never made a move on her. _I'm married, ain't I_, Brendan would say, and _Danny's a mate. _And she knew damn well that a wedding ring was no bar to a bit of fun, and _Danny doesn't have mates_, she said one time, _and neither do you._

Then she suddenly stopped asking, stopped trailing her hand down Brendan's back, stopped standing too close when they were alone together. And it was a relief that she'd given it up, until she said, _Don't worry, Brendan, Danny told me I'm not your type. _And Brendan felt his insides shrink as it registered for the first time why Danny had never warned him to keep his hands off her, and it wasn't because Danny Houston trusted him. It was because Danny Houston _knew._ Even before Vincent, he knew. Brendan renewed his efforts at a Jack the Lad act around Danny from then on, and for a while he'd even convinced himself it had worked.

He didn't take Veronica with him again after that. Still kept her number, because she was useful and clever and would do anything for a price, but he didn't want to be around her any more. It was a shame: they used to have a laugh.

:::::::

Since he'd arrived in Dublin on Monday, Brendan had visited some of his old haunts and met up with one or two of his contacts. Whereas in Belfast he'd gone out of his way to avoid running into anyone he knew, here it was different: nobody here would be likely to give Cheryl a call, or Eileen, to say that they'd seen him, and no-one from home knew anyone he did business with here.

He even earned himself a bit of money. There was a fella who had done him a good turn a year or more ago, and Brendan owed him a favour, so when he ran into Christopher and learned that he was having trouble collecting on a debt, Brendan helped him out. The two of them went together to this pawn shop, leaned on the guy who owed the money. Had to get through a couple of his henchmen first, and as Brendan and Christopher teamed up and beat the crap out of the pair of them, the adrenaline kick was immense. Cathartic. And they got the money with interest.

Brendan didn't expect payment, thinking he and Christopher were even now, but apparently those fellas had had it coming, and Christopher had enjoyed the chance to get his hands dirty, so he shoved a few hundred euros into Brendan's pocket for his trouble.

The men they'd beaten up weren't the kind who'd get the Gardai involved, but even so, Brendan began to feel he should think about moving on, although he didn't know where.

:::::::

He finished his dinner and went up to the bar and bought a whiskey. A single malt, as he was feeling flush.

It was quiet in the pub. The barmaid wandered off to chat to a couple of customers at the other end of the long bar. Brendan was going to go and sit down again, but as he turned he spotted a lad perched on a stool, pint in front of him, busy texting on his phone. Young, maybe early twenties. Brendan watched him: the concentration in his profile; the flicker of his eyelashes.

_Eyelashes?_ Jesus. When did he start noticing eyelashes? It was a tight little backside you looked for, and a mouth that looked like it would soften against yours and open wide for you.

Back when he had to look for random shags, before Vincent and Macca, and before Stephen, Brendan had a type, sure, but he'd ended up with all sorts because what he looked for more than anything was a sign, a tell, that they were a certainty. At first he used to head for the outskirts of districts where he knew there were gay bars, because then they'd be easy to pick out. As time went by he'd got an instinct for it, and once he'd stopped trying to analyse it and started to trust it, he found that you could spot a likely lad in normal places too, and it was never that hard to pick them up. You might even find one who was worth working on and waiting for; a kid with kids of his own, who didn't even know himself that he was that way, but you could see it in the way he changed when he saw you look at him, and the way you felt his eyes on you when your back was turned.

Forget that.

This lad sitting at the bar, he had his wallet sticking out of his back pocket. Brendan moved to sit on the stool next to his.

"You're gonna lose that if you're not careful."

The boy looked up.

"Sorry?"

"Your wallet." Brendan nodded towards his arse. Not subtle: never mind.

"Oh right, cheers."

He had an English accent, London maybe.

"No worries." Brendan waited until the lad put is phone down. "That ain't a Dublin suntan."

The boy's skin was as brown as a nut.

"Ha, no." He smiled, and his teeth were white. "Been away. Dubai. Not long been back."

"Holiday?"

"Partly, yeah, but my mate got a bit of work out there, deejaying."

"Oh yeah? Use a few DJs myself. I'm in the club business, so."

"Where, here?"

He was interested now, this boy with the eyelashes and the brown eyes and the strong wrists, just visible, with their covering of sun-bleached hairs.

"England. Chester way," Brendan told him.

"You're kidding? I've got family there, so's my mate."

"Small world." Shit. "Where abouts?"

"Hollyoaks. You know it?"

_Shit._

"Yeah, no, my place is the other side of Chester."

"Cool."

Small fucking world. Still, Brendan hadn't had sex for three and a half months, nearer four. It was about time he got back in the saddle, wasn't it. Couldn't stay hung up for ever on someone who couldn't stand the sight of him, thought he was a serial killer even. Maybe it would help drive the picture of him out of his head, because he was going mad with it haunting him, every day til he was...

"Craig! Sorry I'm late." Another lad, same age as the first one: blond; blue eyes. "My mum rang, you know what she's like."

The one with the eyelashes stood up. The blond one kissed him lightly on the lips, and they smiled at each other like they shared a thousand secrets.

That was that then. Brendan was startled by how relieved he felt, that this time the chance had gone.

"How's Jacqui doing?" the brown-eyed one asked.

"Better, mum said. Looks like Gilly's really gone."

Unbelievable. Un-fucking-believable.

"Hope he stays gone this time." The first one then remembered Brendan. "Here, this is... sorry, I didn't get your name..?"

"Walker." First name that came into his head. Why, he had no idea.

"This is Mr Walker, he's got a club in Chester that uses DJs." He addressed Brendan. "This is my mate I was telling you about."

The blond one raised an eyebrow at _mate_, and the two of them smiled at each other again. Might as well have _Couple_ tattooed on their heads. It was kind of nauseating, but Brendan felt a vague kind of ache as he looked at them standing together, their shoulders touching.

They had a brief conversation, Brendan and these two lads, and then the blue-eyed one, the DJ, handed him a card with his number on it. Brendan glanced at it. Fucksake, how many McQueens were there?

He swallowed his whiskey and left them to it. It was time to get out of Dublin.


	12. Chapter 12

Brendan spent one last night in the Dublin B&B. By the time he went to bed, he'd settled on where he would head for the next morning – back to Belfast – but he hadn't decided whether to stay there for a few more days, or just to pick up the few belongings he'd left at Macca's, and get the next ferry to Liverpool. He lay awake, weighing the pros and cons.

He was still wary of letting his sons see his face, as it still bore the evidence of the attacks on him in prison. Padraig was too young to deal with seeing his dad in this state, and Declan? He was old enough, and Brendan could tell him the truth that it was all because of his feud with Warren Fox, the latest in their saga of twists and betrayals, wins and losses, and that if Brendan could start over he'd have kept his head and not let it escalate, but that it had passed the point of no return. And maybe Declan would listen, and learn a useful lesson; or maybe he'd take one look at his dad, and whatever Brendan said would make no difference, because the kid would have made up his mind that the real reason he'd been beaten to a pulp was that that was what happened to queers.

No, he couldn't take that risk.

Brendan could carry on what he'd done last week though, lying low, avoiding anywhere he might be recognised, skulking in the shadows to catch a glimpse of his sons. Or, he could man up and make his way back to England. Fuck knew what state the club would be in by now, with Foxy no doubt throwing his weight around. It was about time Brendan gave Cheryl some back-up, assuming she'd managed to keep a foot in the door at all. And it was all very well imagining ways to get even with Foxy, but Brendan was beginning to think he wouldn't even be able to formulate a plan until he was back there, getting a feel for the situation again, letting his instincts come into play. From this distance it all seemed nebulous. Brendan knew all the stories about Warren's past, but he didn't know which scent to follow and what allies he could enlist to hunt him down and get rid of him for good. There was nothing he could do without being there in the thick of it. But he was glad now that he'd come away after prison instead of going straight back to confront him, because Brendan might have killed him then, and Warren Fox wasn't worth doing time for.

By the time he went to sleep he was leaning towards the option of getting the ferry back to Liverpool from Belfast tomorrow night. But then he had the dream.

It was one of the ones that recurred, although the details always changed. This night, it started with that face, brightly lit in the hot summer sun, every atom of it pinprick-sharp. The tiny scar on his lip, there as if to appease God's jealousy of perfection. His skin recently shaven and so smooth that you could barely imagine it capable of growing stubble. Eyes that reflected the blue of the sky, protected from the glare by the shadow of his eyelashes and by the lowering of his dark brows. In the dream, Brendan reached out and touched him, and as Stephen swallowed he felt the rise and fall of his Adam's apple beneath his thumb; and then Brendan kissed him, and there were crowds of people around but it wasn't like when he'd kissed him in the club that time: nobody noticed, and Brendan wasn't afraid.

And then the colours lost their brightness, and the light greyed and it wasn't summer any more, and Stephen was out of reach, and it was as if Brendan was looking at him through fog or a smoked glass window. The details of his face were blurred now, but somehow the expressions that crossed it had a bitter clarity: fear, and then hatred. And then Stephen turned away from Brendan and towards someone else. Sometimes in these dreams it was Noah. Once or twice it had been Macca. This time, it was neither of them; Brendan recognised the lad, but when he woke up he couldn't remember who it had been, only that Stephen was holding his hand. In the dream, only moments after Brendan had kissed Stephen, he couldn't make him hear when he shouted his name.

That was when Brendan woke up, and that was when he decided he wouldn't go back to Belfast today as the first step on his journey back to England. He would go West instead, cross the country to the opposite coast, in the hope that another hundred and thirty miles would finally stretch the hold the boy had on him, far enough to snap it.

:::::::

The rail journey across from Dublin took close to three hours, but it passed quickly. The changing view from the window was enrapturing.

Brendan had done a similar journey by train when he was a young boy, because his mother had relatives on the coast and they'd gone to visit them during the school holidays, him and his mum. Those times it was summer, and for a child used to the city streets, the mile after mile of green landscape speeding past the windows was startling and magical. It was different now, it was the twenty-sixth of November – Brendan had to look at his newspaper to check the date, a reminder of how detached he'd become from his usual life – and the sky was dull and a mist obscured the horizon, but green was still the predominant colour. And then he remembered that once when he had done this rail trip with his mother, it wasn't in the summer holidays but more like this, and he strained to piece together the memory. He recalled his mother borrowing money for their train fare from the woman next door; and he remembered that as they got up from their seats at the end of the journey, his mother was stiff from sitting down, and as they disembarked at Galway station, the jolt of stepping down onto the platform made her catch her breath, and her hand went to her ribs.

Galway was a place he'd come to many times as an adult, though he'd always driven, usually down from Belfast. Once, he'd brought Eileen and the kids for a holiday, to Claddaghduff where his mum's sister lived. Declan must have been three or four years old, and Brendan told him that this was the Atlantic ocean they were looking at, and America was on the other side of it; and Declan made him lift him up onto his shoulders to see if he could see it, and swore blind that he could. _Daddy, I can. I can see the skyscrapers. _It would be good to see the ocean again.

Most of Brendan's trips to Galway had been for work: sometimes he'd be picking up what had come in by boat; other times he'd be selling.

When he got off the train at Galway Ceannt, the air was different: it came cold into the back of his throat and its mineral tang was quite distinct from the sea air on the other side of Ireland.

By the time he'd found a place in the city to stay, it was raining hard. Brendan had a shower, then spent the evening drinking whiskey in the hotel bar.

:::::::

He slept in late the next morning, and when he woke up he couldn't remember if he'd dreamt about Stephen at all; but even asking that question in his mind meant the boy was still with him. It was always like that: the last thing he thought of at night, and the first in the morning, for what must be a year now. Jesus, it was like a kind of sickness.

Brendan had missed the last sitting for breakfast, but there was a girl in the dining room clearing up, and he asked her if there was any chance, and she said the breakfast cook had finished now and the chef wouldn't be in for another hour. And so Brendan said _Please?_ and the girl's cheeks flushed pink, and off she went and did him a fry-up herself. He called her an angel and she blushed again. Still got it.

It was a short walk to the bay, and the view across it was like poetry.

For now, it wasn't raining, so he headed west along the coastal road, filling his lungs with the clean air. There was a bus he could take, but walking was better: it felt like a luxury, when not long ago he'd believed he might be locked away for the rest of his life and walk no further than around a prison yard. His mind went to Silas Blissett, and the pleasure he must have taken in putting all the pieces in place for Brendan to take the rap for his crimes. Clever bastard, he'd give him that. He wondered what he would do if he ever came face to face with him again, that man who might have had him rot the rest of his life away behind bars, who had taken the life of Rae and God knew how many other girls, and who had forced him to see, decisively, how badly Stephen thought of him. There had been moments when Brendan had felt that that boy knew him better than anyone ever had or ever would, but it had turned out to be some kind of romantic delusion. Stephen didn't know him at all, not when Brendan needed him to.

No point worrying about Silas: once a man with that many killings to his name got locked up, he'd never see the light of day again. There was some satisfaction in that at least.

He'd walked for miles. He was at Salthill now, where back in the day there was a handful of bars and clubs where he used to do business. The place had an air of being the same but different; the streets and some of the shops were familiar, but some of places he used to frequent had closed down, and others must have changed hands because their names had altered, the ghosts of their former identities appearing to Brendan half-glimpsed as he passed by.

He bought himself a bag of chips and walked down to the harbour, and sat on a wall to eat them. A pair of gulls swooped down and eyeballed him from a couple of feet away, and swallowed the searing-hot chips that he threw to them seemingly without pain. He told them to fuck off after a minute or two, because he was hungry enough not to want to share, and to his surprise they did as they were told.

The rain was holding off still, and he watched the view for a while before going to find himself a pub. The one on the harbour was boarded up and falling into dereliction. He wouldn't have gone in there anyway, but Jesus, nothing ever lasted.

He found another pub, seeking refuge as the rain began to fall. It was a bit poncey, as if it had been tarted up a few years ago, but its innate shabbiness had begun to reassert itself in fraying upholstery and fading paintwork. He ordered a pint, thinking he ought to give the spirits a rest for a day or two, and sat down at a table in the corner. There was a newspaper on the table with its crossword half-completed, and he got his pen out and started to fill it in. It was disappointingly easy.

"Brendan Brady?"

Fuck. His instinctive defensiveness kicked in, but he restrained it because the voice was a woman's. He looked up at her.

"Bernadette." Brendan stood and hugged her, then held her at arms length to look at her. "Must be something in the seawater, cos you ain't changed a bit."

"Can't say the same for you. Thought you'd always have your tache, and now look at you."

"It's still there, just grew the beard to go with it. Let me get you a drink. Vodka tonic is it?"

"You've got a good memory. I work here though, Brendan, so I'll get these on the house. Just on my break, so."

He watched her walk over to the bar. It wasn't just flannel, she really had barely changed; she was as slender as she used to be, although perhaps the red of her hair had faded a little. He tried to work out how old she must be now. Well into her forties, he reckoned, but she wore it well and had her beauty still. She returned with their drinks.

"You don't mind spending your break drinking where you work?"

"What, busman's holiday you mean? No, it's fine."

Brendan felt something twist inside him, but he suppressed it before he even identified what it was.

"I passed your place just now, Bernadette, all boarded up. What happened there?"

"The Quayside Bar? Long story." She sighed. "What about you, Brendan? Bet you've got half a dozen kids by now. Must be, what, eight, nine years since we seen you?"

It was at least that long since Brendan had stopped coming here.

"No, still just the two boys. Me and Eileen, we split up, so..."

"I'm sorry to hear that. You were always here, there and everywhere though; I suppose she got tired of you being away."

"Something like that, yeah." He finished his first pint.

"You alright?" Bernadette asked. "You seem... I don't know... _sad_. And you've been in the wars, love, haven't you?"

Gently, she touched the cut beneath his eye.

"I'll get over it, you know me." He smiled, and she smiled back. "How about you? Did you two have any more kids?"

"We had the three girls, didn't we, when you were last here? Well we had one more after that, another girl would you believe."

"All as pretty as their mammy, I bet." Brendan took a sip of his second pint. "And how's your Michael?"

"He's fine." Bernadette fiddled with her glass, and stopped looking at Brendan. "We're not together any more. He's a great dad, so we see him all the time, but - "

Brendan interrupted her: he didn't want this can of worms opened.

"A right pair, ain't we. Still, you're looking well on it."

"You always had the charm, Brendan Brady." She smiled again, this time with mischief. "I used to fancy you so bad, did you know that?"

Brendan laughed.

"You musta had a liking for the bad boys then."

"I musta done." She paused, and they both drank. "You single now, or..?"

"Yeah." He should have left it at that, but something about the moment, the intimacy, the drink, the stange/familiar place, made him continue. "There's... there was someone. In England. We broke up though."

He felt a crack in the texture of his voice, and Bernadette must have heard it.

"Oh, love. Worth trying again, if she means a lot to you?"

"Too much water under the bridge."

"Like Mikey and me. But to be honest, we're both better off. We sold up, got out of that whole world when we separated. Lord knows what my girls would be getting into now if we hadn't."

"On the straight and narrow now, is he?"

"We both are. How about you, Brendan?"

"I do alright."

"That's not what I asked."

"Got a club of my own now. Legit. Over in England."

"So you're not here looking for business then? Holiday is it?"

"Needed a change of scene." He saw Bernadette raise an eyebrow. "I ain't on the run either."

They drank and talked, and Brendan got them another drink, and when Bernadette's break ended he moved to sit at the bar so they could chat as she worked.

"Brendan?" Her tone changed to quiet confidentiality. "You want to know what happened, why Mikey and me broke up in the end?"

"These things happen, Bernadette. None of my business."

"He... it turned out, he was gay."

"You're kidding me." Right back into the fucking closet: how could he say to her, _So am I?_

"So you didn't hear anything, Brendan? Rumours, or... See, that's what killed me, thinking everyone was laughing at me all those years."

:::::::

These little towns along Galway bay were goldmines, some of them, and this one in particular. For some reason the clubbing scene had found a centre here, and where there were clubs there were customers, and where those customers went to get sorted before they spent their nights getting off their faces in those clubs, was the Quayside Bar.

It was on Brendan's round. He was only young, early twenties, not much more than a glorified runner on trips like this, but he was good at cultivating the contacts, and he was beginning to make his way.

It was owned by a couple. Michael was in his late twenties, and Bernadette was a few years older than her husband. They had kids, three little girls, and Brendan had his two small boys, and this was a kind of touchstone between them that made Michael tolerate Brendan, and more inclined to deal with him. He was a hard bastard, and the pub was rough; most people came in to buy their gear and then fucked off without stopping. There was a shillelagh kept behind the bar, its hollow head filled with concrete, and bones had been cracked with it.

Michael was one of those stupid fuckers who couldn't see that drugs were for selling, not for using. It made him erratic, putting half his profits up his nose, and drinking too, and the way he drove punters away was bad for business. Half the town was scared of him, Brendan had picked that up after his first couple of visits, but the place had something going for it: it was situated in the jurisdiction of the Port Authority, so the Garda had to get permission before a raid, and because half the Authority drank there they'd always tip Michael off if trouble was coming. The place was untouchable.

According to Bernadette, Michael had inherited the bar when he was twenty-one. By all accounts his dad had been a clever one, a dealer not a user, but he'd ended up dead all the same. His body had been found in a burnt-out car, miles away across the border. Apparently they couldn't tell if he'd died before or after the flames had turned him into a pile of blackened remains, and it was after that that Michael had started using. _He was a good lad, Mikey was, before that_, Bernadette had told Brendan, and she knew what he was like now, the drugs and the drink and the anger; but Brendan knew one thing about him that she didn't know. He knew it, because he saw Michael's eyes on him, and knew what he was thinking as if he was saying it out loud.

The first time they did anything was after a lock-in. It was three in the morning when the last drinkers left, and Bernadette told Brendan he could sleep on a couch in the bar as he was too drunk to drive. And when he woke up with someone's hand at his crotch he thought for a groggy second that it was her, until he opened his eyes and saw Michael, and felt his beard as their mouths hit. Next morning the memory of it was blurry, but Brendan knew Michael had sucked him off, and he remembered giving him a somewhat peremptory handjob in return: well, his head had been banging. He drove off as soon as he could focus enough to get the key into the car door.

Brendan never saw them again if he could help it, the fellas he did those things with. Benjamin had been the only one he'd made that mistake with: he'd taught Brendan all about fucking, and he'd confirmed the lesson Brendan should have learned after Peter, that if you got attached you made yourself weak and gave away the power. Since Benjamin, it had been one-offs. That way, you were protected. So he didn't want to go back to the Quayside Bar after what happened with Michael, only he couldn't afford not to, because he had a reputation and commitments and money at stake.

Michael acted like nothing had occurred. Good. Maybe he'd been too far gone to remember, or maybe he was like Brendan, and sex was nothing more to him than an itch you had to scratch. It wasn't until a couple of months down the line that anything else happened. Brendan was in his car ready to head off back to the North with the money from the latest deal, when Michael came and hammered on the passenger side window, and then opened the door and got in. It was pissing with rain.

"Need a lift up the road, Brendan. Mile or so."

"Okay."

Brendan drove, until Michael asked him to stop. Middle of nowhere. Brendan pulled into a siding overlooking the bay.

They sat watching the rain waterfalling down the windscreen. And then Michael made his move, lurching clumsily to unbuckle Brendan's belt.

Brendan wasn't going to let Michael run things, not this time. He grabbed his wrist and yanked it away.

"Not here." It was a quiet road, but still you never knew who might drive by; he got out of the car and walked round to open the passenger door. "You coming?"

Michael got out.

There were steps cut into the rock, slippery with algae and rain, leading down to a craggy bit of beach. Brendan headed down them, and stood at the bottom waiting for Michael to catch up. There was no-one around; anyone would be mad to be on a beach on a day like this. It was July, but the sun was pale and filtered through a watery haze.

This hadn't been something that Brendan had looked for, but now that it was happening his body began to burn for it, and when he felt Michael's hand on his shoulder and turned to face him, it was impossible to know who had kissed who first.

When it came to it, their clothes were strewn as the two men tore at each other. They broke apart, and Brendan gathered what was his, and Michael followed suit, because the wind was picking up their clothes and whirling them across the lumpy sand. They stashed them in a crevice in the rocks, and Brendan dug into his jacket pocket for his wallet and got the condom out of it, before stowing the jacket away.

He looked at Michael. The guy looked unsure now, his usual bravado gone, standing there naked in the wind and rain with his cock getting hard; and the red-blond hair around it and on his chest and on his head and of his short-cropped beard, darkened as it got wetter. His skin was paler than Brendan's, almost translucent; the veins showed blue in the crooks of his elbows. He was a handsome man: Brendan hadn't realised it before with the scowl he usually wore. His body wasn't wasted like you'd expect on a druggie – it was stocky and muscled, and Brendan felt skinny and young in comparison, although he still reckoned he could take him in a fight. He tore the condom packet open and put it on, with fingers whose tips were going numb with the cold.

Their bodies slid against each other as they kissed, their hands slipping as they gripped. The wind drove the rain at them, coming straight off the Atlantic, untempered by any obstacle this side of America. Michael fought his way out of Brendan's hold, and Brendan thought he had lost his nerve but he hadn't: he turned his back and braced himself against the rocky cliff face, and whatever he said over his shoulder to Brendan was an invitation, although his voice was whipped away by the wind.

A tattooed dragon stared out from the base of Michael's neck, its body curved over his shoulder, its tail circling his arm.

Brendan pushed him hard against the rock and slid his hand over his arse, and opened his hole with two fingers, feeling the heat of it and knowing from Michael's spasm that the cold of his rain-wet fingers was a shock.

"You want this, Michael, do you?" Brendan spoke into his ear, and felt him nod his head, and plunged into him, and Michael's arms flailed behind him, grabbing where he could to urge Brendan to stay in him, keep on him

The rain felt like gravel thrown by the wind against Brendan's back. The sand beneath his feet was like wet mortar. Michael's skin tasted of salt, as if he had come from the sea.

The weather changed as they finished, the rain seeming to turn into steam as the sun broke through. Brendan discarded the condom on the sand, and together the two of them retrieved their clothes. Michael was avoiding Brendan's eyes now, but Brendan looked at him: the front of his body was covered with red abrasions from the rock he'd been pressed against; his cock was flaccid and delicate. He must have come when Brendan was inside him.

They dressed, their clothes clammily cold and gritty, and then they climbed back up the steps to the road.

"Want a lift back to town, or..?"

"I'll walk."

God alone knew what Michael meant to say to his wife.

:::::::

"So you didn't hear anything, Brendan? Rumours, or... See, that's what killed me, thinking everyone was laughing at me all those years."

"He kept it quiet though, didn't he? Fellas like that, they don't let all and sundry know. I doubt anyone was laughing at you, Bernadette."

"Well, if you didn't know, I suppose you're right. I mean, you of all people."

Shit.

"How d'you mean?"

"I mean, he was friendly with you, more than with most. Didn't you know, he respected you? He was gutted that summer when you stopped coming, I reckon he needed a mate."

"Gotta keep moving in my line of work though. Couldn't be helped."

"I know. Good news is, Mikey's happy now. Honestly, Brendan, you wouldn't know him. He met his... partner, I suppose you'd call him... and got cleaned up. No more booze, no more drugs. You know, I used to think it was his dad being killed that made such a mess of him, but now it's obvious isn't it?"

"Is it?"

"It was the lie he was living. He must have hated himself, all those years pretending. No wonder he was angry all the time."

Brendan finished his pint.

"I better head now, Bernadette. Good seeing you."

He stood, and she came out from behind the bar.

"Where you staying, Brendan?"

"Hotel in the city."

They embraced, and Brendan felt her lips against his neck.

"You're welcome to come to mine tonight." Her voice was tremulous, as if she'd summoned up her courage to say it.

"Better not," he said quietly, still holding her. "Got an early start tomorrow."

She extricated herself, and nodded.

"Can't blame a girl for trying."

"I'm flattered. You're a lovely woman, any man would be - "

"Not as lovely as that girl of yours in England though, eh Brendan? You're pretty hung up on her, it seems to me."

:::::::

It was still raining when he left the pub. He thought about walking those miles back to his hotel, but he got a cab in the end. The weather didn't look like changing.


	13. Chapter 13

For the second evening in a row, Brendan passed the time drinking whiskey in the Galway hotel bar. So much for giving the spirits a rest.

It hadn't worked, had it? Crossing the island to put more miles between the boy and him, it hadn't made a scrap of difference: he was always bloody there, in Brendan's dreams when he was asleep, and when he was awake, always just a triggered memory away.

The day spent at Salthill had worn Brendan out. It was the effect of being by the ocean, he thought, the way that you couldn't just _be_, you had to engage with the energy of the place, of the wind and the rain and the taste of the air. But it wasn't just that. It was the conversation he'd had when he ran into Bernadette, and the tiptoeing around the secrets and lies of a decade ago. He was _out_ now, but he was learning that it meant different things in different places. In Belfast, his wife knew about him, and at least one of his sons did, and Macca, and Peter, but Brendan had no clue how far word had spread in the wider family and to his acquaintances and contacts. In Dublin he would no longer keep it secret, nor in Manchester and London and Barcelona and all the other places he did business, but he wasn't going to broadcast it; the grapevine was far-reaching though, so anyone might know this thing about him. Then there were places like Salthill earlier today, where to out himself now would expose the deceptions of the past, and taint what was thought of him in the present.

At least at home, everyone knew now and maybe the worst was over, and the view of him as a hypocrite and a coward would have been superceded by other dramas.

_Home_? Since when had that suburb of Chester, where he'd moved to less than a year and a half ago, been home? He'd never thought of Liverpool, say, as home even though he'd once lived there for almost as long. No, Dublin was home because of his boyhood, and Belfast was home because of his boys, and now Hollyoaks was home because of his –

Fuck.

He swallowed the last of his Jameson's, stood up a little unsteadily, and made his way up to his room.

He'd used the shower yesterday and this morning, a powerful one that blasted the cobwebs away, but tonight he didn't need invigorating, and if he was honest with himself he didn't even feel like standing up; he needed relaxing, so he ran a bath. There were small glass bottles of expensive products on a corner shelf, and he sniffed a couple before emptying one into the running water. When he turned off the taps, globules of the fragrant oil danced then settled on the surface as the water stilled.

He stripped off his clothes in the bedroom, and then went back into the bathroom. The light there was harsh so he switched it off: there was enough light coming from the bedroom if he left the connecting door open. The water was sublime, hot enough to give a frisson of pain, and the bath was bigger than the one at home and shaped to cradle you as you lay back in it.

If Stephen was always going to be in Brendan's head, he might as well make himself useful. Stephen's body, that was all. The memory of it, its plateaus and shadows, its stringy muscles and fragile bones; its resistance and compliance, its strength and its softness.

Brendan's cock floated weightless under the water. He batted it gently with his fingertips, and it drifted from side to side, and then as he imagined that the fingers that played there were Stephen's, he felt a rush of blood to it, and its soft curve straightened and hardened. He kept his focus on the boy. On the boy as he was when it was simple, as a collection of body parts to be explored and exploited, and a voice and eyes that begged for more; a willing and gifted pupil. All that and more, but not the other things he was, argumentative and demanding, frustrating and addictive, the things with which he'd stealthily stolen the power Brendan had thought was his. There was no point in thinking about those things, but even as Brendan closed his eyes and wrapped his hand around his cock, he knew that trying to remember Stephen's body but not the spirit of him or his layers of attitude, was a losing battle.

:::::::

A stolen afternoon.

You'd sent him off on a trumped-up errand to take an order form to the cash & carry. Stephen had grumbled, naturally, asking why you couldn't do the ordering by phone – _Because I said so, Stephen_ – and complained about how long it would take as he'd have to get the bus because he couldn't drive. Not legally, anyway.

You'd given him enough time to get to the bus stop, and then told Cheryl she'd have to hold the fort as you had a meeting to go to. And then you'd walked home, texting Stephen on the way: _Change of plan. Meet me at mine now._

And now, you're just coming down the stairs from brushing your teeth, and Stephen knocks on the door. You open it.

"Come in." You check that there's no-one about outside as he slinks in past you. "Good lad."

You shut the door, and face him.

"Well, what's the change of plan?" Stephen is playing innocent, but the tip of his tongue appearing momentarily between his parted lips gives him away: he knows what the new plan is.

You kiss him, and his body moulds itself against yours, and you hold him tightly enough to force the air from his lungs. Then you let go of him, and head towards your bedroom.

"You can't just assume, Brendan."

You turn back to look at him. He hasn't moved, and his mouth has set into a pout, and you want his bottom lip between your teeth.

"What? Assume what?"

"That I'm gonna just - "

"Roll over?"

"Yeah. No! That I'm gonna just say yes all the time."

You go and stand in front of him again.

"You kissed me back, didn't you? Or am I mistaken?" You rest a hand gently on his hip.

"Yeah." Stephen nods. "But you just always think you can - "

Jesus. Who does Stephen think he's kidding with this ingenue routine? He's been flirting with you all morning at work, doing that _Fuck me now_ thing with his eyes every time you glance at each other; turning his back when he bends to pick up glasses, in the uniform that was chosen before he was hired but which could have been designed for him, those tight black trousers just waiting for the boy who'd fit them, like Cinderella and the glass slipper. Looking over his shoulder to check that you were watching, and flashing a filthy smile, the cocky little bastard. That's what had made your pants get tighter, that's what had made you contrive to get him back here now, so it's a bit late for the boy to start playing hard to get.

And yet... And yet he looks genuinely troubled, as if he thinks you see him as a cheap shag. And you don't want him to feel like that.

"I thought... I thought it'd be nicer, Stephen, that's all. An hour or two to ourselves, yeah? Instead of..." Instead of a desperate fuck in the toilets in the club before the rest of the staff arrive, a hasty mutual wank in the cellar, a blowjob and a snog in the office with the music blaring through the walls.

"Oh, right." Stephen seems to accept that.

"Alright now?" You sense he'll need a little care this time; you kiss him again, not fiercely but breathing him in as you sway together. "Good boy."

Stephen leads the way to your room. You follow, your eyes fixed on his arse.

You take it slowly, with none of the usual scrabbling at buckles and zips and laces and buttons; instead, you stand apart as you undress, your eyes locked together, Stephen's cheeks colouring with a self-consciousness that he doesn't usually show. It makes you smile.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing's funny, Stephen." You take his chin in your hand and kiss his mouth, and then you shove him onto the bed: he lands on his back, and bends his knees and spreads them, and you settle on top of him. "_Hard to get _didn't last long."

Shouldn't have said it out loud.

"What's that meant to mean?" Stephen turns his head to evade your kiss, and his body stiffens.

"Mother of god, Stephen. I just meant, I want this, and you want this. What's your problem?"

"You just don't get it, do you?"

Stephen struggles beneath you. You relent and sit up, kneeling between his legs.

"What? Get what?"

"It's always what Brendan wants, when Brendan wants it, and - "

"I thought we'd been through this?" Looking at the stubborn little fucker, all fired up, you're aware that your desire isn't getting any less: quite the opposite. You haul the boy into your arms and roll onto your back so that he's lying on top of you, and then you let go so that he's free to get off if he wants. He pushes himself up on his arms and looks at you. You're acutely aware that your bodies are still pressed together from feet to stomachs. "Alright then, Stephen. I'm all yours. What Stephen wants, when Stephen wants."

You watch the boy's face. He looks suspicious, but when you shift beneath him so that he feels your cock moving against his pelvis, he breaks into a grin and kisses you. Your fingers dig into the cheeks of his arse, then slide between them, and he moans.

"Have you got a thingy?" he asks into your mouth.

"In the drawer."

He clambers off you and reaches into the drawer for a condom and the bottle of lube. You put the condom on, and then he kneels astride you and pumps a squirt of lube onto his fingers, and reaches behind himself. His eyes half close and he bites his lip, and you imagine what he's doing to himself back there while your cock is so ready it's painful.

The sight of the boy is extraordinary. Shadows appear and disappear between his ribs as he breathes. His hips seem impossibly narrow, and yet his thighs are strong and densely hairy; and there's a treasure-trail of hairs running down from below his navel to his cock. He's got a little stiffy going on.

You put your hands lightly on his waist and stroke up his flanks, and rub your thumbs over his small, sloping nipples, and feel them become erect.

The daylight coming through the window is unforgiving, but the boy is flawless. If someone told you that his skin tasted of honey, you'd believe it.

And you wonder what it is about Stephen. Macca was good in bed, experienced: he was reckless, as if he'd do whatever it took to feed your appetite, so in the end there was no challenge and no satisfaction. Vincent was as lovely as Stephen, and more delicate; but his innocence somehow seemed new each time, confronting you like an accusation and making you want to knock it out of him. With Stephen, there is something different, something that's new to you, and it's unnerving. But there's a joy to it, whatever it is, and so you find yourself grinning up at him.

He stops what he's doing, and frowns.

"What you laughing at?"

"What?" _What_?

"You're laughing at me, why?"

"I'm not! Jesus. You really want an argument now? What is it, your hormones?"

"Fuck you." Stephen climbs off and flops down beside you, face down on the mattress, pulling the cover over himself.

You look at his face. He looks offended, genuinely, and you try to figure out what must be going on in his head. Doesn't he know that you – For a moment you shut your eyes, wondering what this _feeling_ is. Doesn't he know that you _appreciate_ him?

"Stephen, I..."

"What?" Stephen looks at you. His lips are red from kissing. His eyes are sad, but there's a hint of expectation in them that you know you will fail to meet.

"Are you gonna let this go to waste?" You gesture towards your straining cock. Your balls are aching, and the condom feels uncomfortably tight.

Stephen turns his face away.

"You'll have to wank yourself off then, won't you."

The hair at the crown of his head grows in a kind of spiral; you've never noticed it before.

"I would, Stephen, but you don't keep a dog and bark yourself."

Wrong thing to say. Stephen isn't finding anything funny today, and he turns his head to face you again, outraged.

"A _dog_?"

"It's just an expression for fucksake. Trying to lighten the mood."

"Yeah well, major fail."

"Alright." You try not to sound as frustrated as you feel. "Alright Stephen, I'm sorry, okay?"

"For what?" Stephen's cheek is resting on his forearms, which are folded on the pillow. His gaze is demanding, his eyes dark with hurt.

"For joking." You know this isn't enough.

"What about for laughing at me?"

"I didn't. I didn't laugh at you, Stephen. I smiled, okay? I can smile at you, can't I?"

"What for though?"

So fucking suspicious. Better tell him something. Not the whole truth, because your tongue can't form those words, but something. Tell him something that's true.

"Seriously? I gotta justify _smiling_? Okay, I smiled because - " _Because you look like a fallen angel. Because I look at you, and I can't believe my luck._ "Because you looked good, Stephen, okay? You... you looked sexy. Jesus."

And that's enough for him, at least for now: he smiles like he's the happiest man on Earth, as if those words, that little compliment, have set off a chain of possibilities in his imagination, as if a future has opened up. And you think again, what is it about this boy, and is he worth the trouble, with all his questions and demands? And already you suspect that he is. He's more of a match for you than the ones before him, more of a man, and you sense the impossibility of leaving him like you left them. You feel your power slipping, because he has it now even though he doesn't know it, and the only power you can be sure of now is your power to hurt him.

You pull the cover off him. He's still lying face down, and you slap him on his backside, hard as you can. Your palm stings like fuck, and he yelps and flips over.

"What was that for?" He's shocked. Scared, maybe.

He doesn't have to be scared though, not now.

"Gonna behave yourself now, are you?"

"You can't tell me what to do."

"I'm your boss, so."

"Not here, though. Not when we're - "

"Ain't I?"

And you turn him over onto his front again, and he lets you hold him down as you kiss the red handprint you've made on him. And then he's on his back and you're kissing, and his legs are around your waist and his hands in your hair.

At last you're in him, and you rock together, breathing in sync, open-mouthed, and you don't want it to end but in the end, you do. Your thrusts are urgent now, and you feel the muscles inside him spasm around you, squeezing you in waves, and his gasps escalate into staccato cries, and warm cum spatters onto your belly. And as you come too, roaring and violent, the whole world is _him_. Just him, and the lightning in you.

You pull the condom off and wrap it in a wipe, and clean yourself up a bit, and so does he. Then you lie down and he cuddles up, his head under your chin, his fingers playing with the hairs on your chest. He has a leg slung over yours. You kiss his hair.

He's uncharacteristically quiet and you wonder if he's fallen asleep, but then he starts to kiss you again, your chest, your neck, and you feel his cock jabbing against your thigh. He's hard again – well, it doesn't take long at his age.

"Horny little fucker," you say, and you get him onto his back again and you get between his legs, and grab his thighs and bend them up so they're against his chest, and you hold them there. Flexible, this lad. His spine is curved and his arse is lifted off the bed, and the close-up view is delicious, and your tongue goes to his hole. There's a faint taint of rubber there. The remains of the lube taste synthetic but not unpleasant. Your tongue pushes in through his weakened resistance; the taste of him is earthy and sour. A low moan comes from deep in your throat, and you hear _Fuck, oh, fuck_ from him.

When you come up for air you let go of his thighs, and his legs relax onto the bed. You run your lips over the soft, loose skin of his scrotum and he giggles and squirms, and then you close your mouth over his erection and suck him til he's empty.

You lie on Stephen, your weight on him, your forearm pillowing his heavy head as you kiss. You like him to taste himself on your lips, in your mouth, because the first time you went down on him and kissed him after, he said it was dirty, although he did it anyway. Nowadays, he does it without wrinkling his nose: it's part of the education you're giving him.

Time's getting on, and Cheryl will be wondering what's holding Stephen up and why your meeting is taking so long.

You roll off his body.

"You want a shower or anything before you go?"

And he knows the score, and puts his Chez Chez uniform back on, and you think he's going but he gets to the bedroom door and comes back, and leans over the bed, and his hand goes under the cover and finds your cock and strokes it hard, and then he leaves, and leaves you wanting more.

:::::::

Brendan finished off fiercely, and came with a shudder. He swirled the bath water with his hand, and the cloud of cum dispersed and vanished. He took a deep breath and slid beneath the surface, and listened to the dull pulsing whoosh in his head, and only emerged when he felt as if his sinuses might burst.

He dried himself off and sat on the edge of the bed. When he happened to notice his mobile lying on the bedside table, he knew it was a bad idea, but he'd been drinking, hadn't he, and plenty of people made stupid decisions when the drink was in them. And he'd only done it once before, and Stephen hadn't known it was him because it was a new number. If he did it again, where was the harm?

He keyed the number.

Stephen sounded muffled and confused when he answered the phone: he must have been sleeping, he must be in bed.

"Hello? Hello? Who's this?" There was a long pause, and then, "Is that you, Brendan?"

How did he know? Brendan hadn't even breathed to give himself away.

He ended the call.

The funny thing was, when Stephen had said his name, he hadn't sounded as if he hated him.


	14. Chapter 14

By the time the train arrived in Belfast, Brendan felt as if he had been travelling all day. He'd had breakfast in the hotel before checking out, then he'd taken a walk along Galway bay, and left there wondering when he would be back there again, or even if he ever would at all. Sometimes he felt as if he was living on borrowed time, that his life would be cut short. He'd had that feeling, on and off, for as long as he could remember, a sense that he wouldn't make old bones, and the thought didn't frighten him. It was only in the past year or so that a certain fear had crept into him, that nameless things would be left undone and unsaid, and that they were things that mattered: if only he knew what they were.

He'd shaken off his introspective mood with the mundane activities of buying his train ticket, and reading a newspaper as the train crossed the country to Dublin; he got some air and a sandwich when he changed trains for the connection to Belfast.

It was dark when he got off at his destination, although it wasn't even five o'clock. Brendan had timed it badly, because if he had caught an earlier train he'd have been back in time to catch a glimpse of his sons as they walked home from school. As it was, they'd be home by now, doing whatever it was they did after school these days.

He still hadn't made up his mind when he was going to head back to England. He'd toyed with the thought of getting the ferry tonight, but now he realised that he couldn't stand the thought of leaving without seeing his children again. He knew he would have to go back to Macca's, as he'd left some of his stuff there, but he didn't want to go there right now. Macca didn't get home from work until after eleven at night, and Brendan didn't feel like spending the next few hours alone. His own company wasn't enough for him at times, and at times, it was too much.

Over a coffee in a cafe near the station, he scrolled through the few contacts in his phone. He considered calling Eileen and facing the music, but he decided against; he had felt all along that he shouldn't let Declan and Padraig see him until he was himself again, and he stuck to that decision.

He scrolled on down, past Macca's number, and settled on a name that made a kind of sense to him to call.

The number was answered straight away.

"Hello?"

The voice was instantly recognisable.

"Peter. It's Brendan."

There was a pause that felt longer than it was.

"_Brendan_? You know you're on the missing list, right?"

"Yeah." So Peter had heard. "You in Belfast, Peter?"

"Aye, yeah, just finished work. Where are you?"

"I'm in town." Brendan waited – hoped – for Peter to fill the silence.

"You wanna get a drink or something?" Peter sounded cautious.

"I'm beat, Peter, to be honest." Brendan didn't want to find himself in some bar where someone might recognise him.

Another silence.

"Come to mine, then, if you want. I'll be home in twenty minutes."

Brendan wanted this. He knew Peter and Macca had seen each other last Christmas before Peter had moved to Hollyoaks – Macca had told Brendan that much – and he wanted to know what information they'd exchanged. And he had a nagging feeling, too, that he needed something from him.

Peter gave him the address. Brendan finished his coffee and got a taxi.

:::::::

Pete had been home for a few minutes when Brendan arrived. He recognised his grunt over the intercom, and spun down the hallway to let him in.

Brendan hardly looked like the same man as he'd been the last time he saw him. Back then in the summer, on the few occasions when Pete had spotted him around the village, Brendan had been giving it the big man act, trying to be dad of the year when his boy Declan was about, and untouchable when anyone's eyes were on him. Pete had known it was a facade: he'd seen him one day, just after the end of term, half-dressed in the street, trying to hold the bits of his life together while that lad Ste looked as if his heart had been stamped on.

The facade was different now. The man who stepped in through Pete's front door was physically different – he had a beard, his face looked as if he'd been in a fight or two, and he was more muscular than before – but it wasn't just that. The veneer of bravado looked paper-thin.

"Will I stick the kettle on, Brendan, or..?"

Brendan held up a carrier bag from the off licence.

"Not too early for you these days, is it, Peter? _Respectable_ fella like you?"

Okay, so Brendan still had enough bite in him to try a putdown. Useful to know.

Pete got a couple of glasses from the kitchen, then led the way into the living room. Brendan watched him lever himself out of his wheelchair and onto the sofa. He sat down on a chair opposite, poured them each a Jameson's, and handed one to Pete.

"Sláinte," Pete said, and took a sip of his drink. "So, how long you been in Belfast?"

"Got here today, this afternoon." Peter didn't need to know he'd spent a week here before his trip to the South.

"Seen anyone yet? Your Eileen?"

"Not yet."

"Anyone know you're here?"

"No." Brendan wondered what exactly Peter had heard. He had already left Hollyoaks by the time Brendan was arrested, but from his questions it sounded like he knew something of what had happened, and that he was well aware that this wasn't just a routine visit home to Belfast to see the kids.

"Anyone know you're okay?" Pete waited, but Brendan just swirled his whiskey around in his glass and stared into it. "Cos you're a popular guy, Brendan."

"Meaning?" Brendan looked up sharply.

"Meaning, I've had a lot of phone calls about you." Pete enjoyed Brendan's discomfort, and could tell that he was forcing himself to hold his gaze.

"Oh yeah? Who from?"

"Cheryl, for one. Called me a couple of times, she has, worried sick by the sound of it. Lynsey too. It's a hell of a story, Brendan: you've been through bad times, haven't you?"

"I've got over it." Brendan finished his drink and poured another, and topped up Pete's. "Who else? A lot of phone calls, you said."

"Eileen."

"She okay?"

"She's survived worse, hasn't she, and she's got that fella of hers, so - "

"Yeah. Who else?"

"DC Scott." Pete leaned back and watched Brendan's face, but its mask didn't slip. "That's the little guy next door to you, isn't it?"

"When was that?"

"Couple of days ago."

"What he want?"

"Said it wasn't police business. A favour for a friend, so he said."

"What friend?" Warren Fox, must be.

"I don't know, Brendan. I asked him, he wouldn't tell me. I'm guessing you and him don't have mutual friends."

"You guess right. What you tell him?"

"Nothing. Fucking hell, Brendan, just because the tax man knows where my money comes from these days, it doesn't mean I'm gonna tell some boyscout detective the names of your associates."

Brendan nodded. Peter had never been a grass.

"Course not. Sorry."

"You gonna tell me where you've been then, since you go out?"

"Around. Dublin for a bit. Galway. Had to get away, see, clear my head."

"Understandable. You've got people worrying about you, though. Cheryl, she's worried that you might - "

"I wouldn't. Wouldn't do that to my boys, would I."

"It's not the first time she's thought it though, Brendan. Did you know that?"

"What? No. Why would she think I'd do a thing like that?"

"Because you've got form, haven't you? And last time she thought it, she'd just found out – her and me, we both had – that you'd tried it before. That you were trying to kill yourself, the night you put me in that thing." Pete punched the arm of his wheelchair.

"I never said that, Peter, I never said it wasn't an accident."

"You didn't have to, Brendan." In the last few months, Pete had got used to the idea that it hadn't been an accident, and in the end, what difference did it make to him? He looked at Brendan, who seemed to have shrunk in on himself; Pete poured them both a drink, and felt Brendan's hand tremble as he took the glass.

"And Cheryl thought I was gonna... do something like that, did she?" Brendan's voice was gruff and quiet.

"Back then, yeah. When you disappeared after it all came out. So to speak."

Brendan managed a smile.

"Funny guy. And now she's thinking it again."

"Aye, so she said. Bit of a pattern I'm spotting there. You can't keep running out on people, mate, every time things go to shit."

"I'm going back in a day or two, so. Soon as I've seen my kids again."

"Again?"

"Yeah." Fuck, might as well say now. "I seen them, soon as I got out. Came straight to Belfast, didn't I."

"But Eileen said - ?"

"They didn't see me. I watched them go to school. Couldn't let them see me like this, Peter, could I."

"The beard's not that bad."

They both laughed, and Pete's smile invoked a ghost that Brendan thought he'd banished a decade and a half ago.

He focused.

"Saw my boys a few times, then headed off to Dublin."

"Where'd you stay when you were in Belfast then?"

"With a mate."

"Oh yeah?" Pete didn't think Brendan had mates. "Anyone I know?"

The whiskey was loosening Brendan's tongue.

"Macca."

"Seriously? My god." Last time Pete had seen Macca was nearly a year ago, when the lad had just returned from a stay in England, and Pete had pieced together his story: that he'd been the one Brendan had had the affair with that had ended his marriage, and that Brendan had put him in hospital. "I don't know how you do it, Brendan. Must have a magic prick."

"Ain't sleeping with him, Peter. He just let me kip on his sofa, is all."

"Glad to hear it, after what you did to him."

"Told you all about it, did he?" Brendan's knuckles whitened as they tightened around his glass. Peter's little chat with Macca would have been fresh in his mind when he moved over to Hollyoaks at the beginning of the year. Was that why he had been so keen to warn Stephen off, because he'd found out how Brendan treated his lovers?

"Macca didn't have to tell me, Brendan. I saw the state of him, and I knew he'd been over to England to see you. I knew about your... temper. I knew you were gay. I knew you were a fuck-up. I put the pieces together for myself. You better not go after him for talking, because he didn't."

"Jesus, Peter. Don't hold back."

"You need telling." Pete topped up their drinks. "Look, I'm gonna need some food to soak this up. See, I'm not used to it am I, now that I'm _respectable_. Chinese do you?"

Brendan wasn't sure how he had expected this to go, but he hadn't imagined he'd be put on the back foot like this. It was disconcerting. There was no love lost, and yet he was being offered dinner. He should go, quit while he was – not ahead, but not yet destroyed. Only, the flat was warm, the whiskey was working, and Peter was already on the phone, a takeaway menu in his hand.

:::::::

The cartons were all empty, but for some rice left in a corner of one of them. They'd finished Brendan's Jameson's, but Pete had a bottle of Bushmills, and they were working their way down that.

They'd been talking about the past, all the things they'd got up to when they were teenage boys making their way. It was good to remember. There was no-one else Brendan could talk with about those days: some of the fellas they'd worked for were still around, but nobody but Peter had shared the experience so closely. Malachy was dead – a year now, just over – and in any case he had chosen a straight path before things had got too risky, too dark. No, it was just the two of them, Brendan and Peter, who were bound together in that time, until that night when the road had forked and their paths were chosen for them.

It hung in the air, that night and the possibility of talking about it; but each time they approached it, one or the other of them shied away. Drinking was easier. Anything was easier.

It was Pete who braved it in the end.

"I don't... I'm not bitter, any more, Brendan. I've made a life for myself and, you know, it is what it is."

"How can you not be bitter? Jesus, if it was me, I'd want to fucking - "

"I wanted to. I wanted to destroy you for what happened, Bren, I'm not gonna lie. Didn't change my mind til after I moved over to England."

"That's what you came for, wasn't it? To get even."

"I came because the job came up. I hadn't been waiting for my chance, Brendan, I'd got on with things, sorted myself out. Don't flatter yourself, you weren't at the front of my mind all those years. I was in a rut though, when Lynsey told me about the job at Hollyoaks High. I was in a shit school, and me and my girlfriend had split up, so things had been..."

"Festering."

"Yeah, festering. Thought it was my chance to turn you over; thought it would help me somehow."

"That why you got cosy with Warren Fox?"

"Well, it wasn't for the intellectual conversation."

"No?"

"No."

"You didn't, though. You coulda teamed up with him, but you didn't. I still don't get why, Peter. Foxy, he woulda used anything you told him, so why didn't you?"

"You know we coulda talked about this, you and me. Coulda cleared the air, months ago. I tried to talk to you, didn't I, after all that business with Cheryl finding out about you. Same as after you had that bust-up with your Ste when Eileen showed up: I came looking for you after that, d'you remember? And you told me to keep my nose out."

Brendan remembered. He remembered walking away from Peter, not believing that his offer of friendship could possibly be genuine, and not knowing how to handle it if it was. And now he was doing it again, Peter, with those green eyes that looked right into him and saw him like nobody else did.

And, _Your Ste._ No, he wasn't going there.

"It was Foxy did this to me." Brendan indicated the scars and bruises on his face. "Had contacts inside, see. Wanted me to sign my club over to him."

"Running away again, Brendan?"

"What? No, I'm going back there, I told you. Gonna sort it, gonna get rid of the fucker."

"That's not what I meant. Sure, you'll deal with Warren, you'll talk about Warren, but the rest of it, the stuff that matters? You run, don't you? Every single time."

"Fuck off, Peter. What, are you Jeremy Kyle now? Jesus."

Pete refilled their drinks.

"So to answer your earlier question, Brendan. Why didn't I team up with Warren Fox to take you down? Because, after all those years thinking it was me that came off worse from the crash, I realised it was you. You've already paid."

"Jesus." Brendan gulped at his whiskey. "Jesus, Peter, I've heard some bullshit in my time, but _this_, this is - "

"I just hadn't worked it out before, I guess because we hardly saw each other for years. But you're scarred. I don't know what else has happened to you - "

"You don't want to know."

" - But I've never seen anyone so damaged before."

"This is bullshit." Brendan stood up and lurched towards the door. "Fuck you. Fuck this."

"Sit down, man! Where you gonna go?"

Brendan's head was spinning; he hadn't realised how drunk he was. He stumbled back to the chair and slumped into it.

"Fuck you, Peter."

"Yeah mate, I heard you the first time."

Brendan leaned his head back and shut his eyes for a minute, then opened them, squinted at his watch, and closed them again. It felt like the middle of the night, but it wasn't yet ten.

"Ain't you got books to mark, Peter? Instead of drinking and fucking alanysing... analysing me. A school night, ain't it? Tut tut."

"I don't do any marking. Perk of being the Head."

"That's what you are, is it?"

"Yep. Got headhunted, I did. Lucky for me, cos the job in Hollyoaks went tits-up."

"Got the sack, did you?"

"No. Restructuring, they called it. They wanted me to take a pay cut, I told them where to stick it and came back here."

"Nothing to keep you there, I guess."

"No. Thought there might be, but no."

"Oh yeah? A girl, was it?"

"Isn't it always?" Pete saw Brendan twitch. "Or a lad, in your case."

"Leave off with the touchy-feely, Peter, for chrissake. I ain't got a... reason to go back, 'cept for Cheryl, and 'cept for getting Warren out."

Pete sloshed another slug of whiskey into their glasses, and pushed Brendan's towards him.

"You didn't work things out with Ste then?"

Brendan drank.

"Nothing to work out."

"You coulda fooled me."

"You know what, Peter? You're starting to - "

"You can drop the act, Brendan. I know you. I've seen you, saw you back in April when you'd lost it all, lost Cheryl, when you got out of hospital. Anyone else who'd whacked you with a baseball bat, you wouldn't be saying you were even, you'd be going after them to get payback. I saw, Brendan. You'd got it bad for that lad."

"That's... that was bloody April. He moved on. I moved on."

"He went back to you though, didn't he. Or you went back to him."

"Whatever. Whatever, Peter. It's over now, so."

"He's got someone new?"

"No!" Brendan consciously calmed his voice. "No. Don't know. Don't think so."

"You then? Traded him in for a younger model?"

"What's that meant to mean?"

"Just thinking. Ste's younger than Macca, so the next one's gonna be younger still is he?"

"Fucksake, Peter, what d'you think I am?"

Pete smiled.

"Just winding you up."

"Hilarious."

"I thought so. So, you've given up on Ste then? Accepted defeat? Gonna let someone else have him?"

"It's not like that." Brendan felt a wave of tiredness. "There's too much happened, Peter, he's never gonna... even if I wanted him to."

"Which you do."

"Do I?" He felt nauseous as he swallowed the last of his drink.

"Look, I'm gonna turn in, Bren, or I'll still be pissed at school tomorrow. You'll stay, yeah? Pull out the sofa bed here." Pete heaved himself back into his wheelchair. "Sleep it off, mate. Maybe things'll look better in the morning."


	15. Chapter 15

Almost as soon as he collapsed onto the sofa bed at Peter's flat, Brendan fell asleep. He slept heavily, but woke up in the early hours of the morning feeling dehydrated and with a savage headache. This was happening too often, the drinking past the point when he knew he should stop, and the mornings when he cursed at himself for it.

He found some painkillers in a drawer in the kitchen – strong ones, making him wonder about Peter's condition. Brendan hadn't thought about it consciously, but now he realised that he'd always assumed that the paralysis meant Peter couldn't feel very much: but what if he could? What if he'd had pain, adding to his suffering over the years? Even if the tablets were just for headaches, for a man with only half a working body it must be an extra torment. How had he not been driven mad by the cruelty of it?

Brendan filled a pint glass from the tap, swallowed two tablets, and drained the water in one. He went back to bed, but couldn't get back to sleep.

The only light in the room came from the standby on the Sky box, and from the dvd player on which the green-glowing digits of the clock barely seemed to advance with each glance across at it.

He didn't think about it very often, that night when he'd steered his car into a lorry. The crash itself came into his dreams sometimes though, and so did its aftermath, as a series of fractured images. Brendan would wake, sweating, and pray for the pictures to fade. What led up to it, he never dreamt about and couldn't think about. Only now, in the pitch-dark room, in a strange bed, and after spending longer with Peter this evening than they'd spent together in all the years since it happened, it was impossible not to remember.

:::::::

There were four of them in the end. Two other lads had dropped out, one because of some family thing, and the other because he got a job that he had to start straight away. The four that were left were going to enjoy it: it was a trip that marked the end of school and the beginning of something new.

Malachy had something lined up, an apprenticeship in the building trade. Alan was going to leave home to go to university after the summer. Peter and Brendan had big ideas; they were already earning money for themselves, and now that they were no longer schoolkids they'd be taken seriously. They would have a new freedom to go where they needed to, and they'd been clever in the jobs they'd already done, kept their eyes and ears open, learnt who were the people that mattered and how they operated. Peter still lived at home, but Brendan had moved out of his, more or less, and they planned to rent a flat together once they started making proper money, so they'd have no-one to answer to.

He spent the night before the trip sleeping on Peter's bedroom floor so that they could get an early start in the morning, but they talked so late into the night that they overslept, and Peter's mum had to wake them in the end.

Brendan had a car: he'd been the first of them to pass his test and get one. He drove with Peter to pick Malachy up first, and then on to Alan's, and then they left the city and headed for Lough Neagh. They hadn't made plans beyond finding a place to set up camp, and drinking the beers that were stacked between Alan and Malachy on the back seat of the car. The drinking started as they pitched their tents.

Alan had gone camping before, so he'd brought his own two-man tent. Peter had borrowed another from one of the lads who had dropped out of the holiday. There was never any question as to who would share with who: Brendan and Peter were best mates, so it was only natural.

Their days passed aimlessly. The others did a bit of fishing, but Brendan didn't get the point of it. They drifted in and out of the two pubs that were in walking distance. They played football in the field during the day, and cards at night. They talked, and they argued. It was good: there was no-one in authority over them; there were no girls getting in the way, like Peter's girlfriend had been since he'd been going out with her these past couple of months, hanging around when Brendan and Peter had stuff they needed to talk about. This was better, this was how it used to be before there was a _serious_ girlfriend leeching into their time.

One night, Brendan fell out with Malachy. They'd never got on too well, and one of their arguments turned into a fight. Malachy was going on about the number of girls he'd pulled; asked, _What about you, Brendan?_ and the first girl Brendan named – one he'd taken out on a double date with Peter – it turned out that Malachy had gone out with her too, and screwed her, and knew for a fact that Brendan hadn't. And then when Brendan thought of another one, Eileen, because she was pretty and liked him and always tried to catch his eye, Malachy joked, _Like them in school uniform do you Brendan, you pervert? _And by the time Peter came to his defence – _She's sixteen, Mal, we're eighteen, what's the fucking problem?_ – Brendan had thrown the first punch.

It blew over.

They talked about it in their tent later that night, Brendan and Peter, their voices low.

"You shouldn't let him get to you, Bren, you know?"

"He was asking for it."

"Mal always wants to look like the big man. Just let him though, eh? No need to go looking for trouble."

"He brought it, Peter, I ain't letting him walk over me." There was a silence then, and Brendan listened to Peter's breathing, and imagined his green eyes searching for scraps of light in the darkness. "If he knew some of the things we've done, he'd be shitting himself."

"Ha, yeah." Peter laughed quietly. "Forget about Mal, Brendan, he knows fuck all anyway."

"He ain't got a girlfriend either, so. Just goes with the easy ones, don't he."

"What about that Eileen? You gonna ask her out? Nothing wrong with dating her now we're not in school. You like her, yeah?"

"Dunno. She's okay."

"Okay? She's gorgeous. If I wasn't going out with Angela I might ask for her number myself..."

"Miss her, do you?"

"Angie? Leave off, it's only been four days. Anyhow, girls are not... I mean, your mates are your mates, you know?"

Brendan knew. A girl would never _get_ you like your best mate did.

Next night, it rained.

They'd got a campfire going earlier when they got back from the shops with food to cook and a fresh supply of beers. It was a laugh, trying to get the sausages and bacon and potatoes and a pan of beans to an edible state, and their mood was good as it started to get dark. When it began to rain they all retreated to Malachy and Alan's tent with their plates; their arguments about the rules of poker as they tried to have a game, were good-natured. Peter's teeth looked very white in the torchlight when he smiled.

The food ran out, and when the beer did too, they called it a night. Peter and Brendan darted the few metres' distance to their tent, and fell into it, laughing and dripping.

It was a warm night, despite the rain. They didn't switch their torches on as they took off their wet clothes and got into their sleeping bags. The sounds of Peter unbuckling and unzipping, and the rustling as he moved about, seemed amplified in the small space as the rain drummed on the canvas above them. Brendan felt in his bag and found the bottle of whiskey he'd brought with him. He unscrewed the cap.

"What you got there?"

"Whiskey." Brendan held the bottle out towards Peter. "Here."

There was just enough moonlight leaking into the tent for Brendan to see him sit up, then he felt him take the bottle and heard the glug of the liquid as Peter tipped it back and took a slug of it.

"Cheers."

Their hands touched as Brendan took back the bottle, and a shock ran through him, and a kind of shiver that he'd felt lots of times in the last few years: the kind that left a trace behind it that you didn't dare think about.

He drank from the bottle, his mouth around the neck of it where Peter's lips had been. Brendan paused and swallowed, then took another mouthful. The whiskey stung the back of his throat, and that was what he concentrated on, the burn of the spirit relenting into a gentler warmth.

"Want some more, Peter?" Brendan's own voice sounded strange to him, distant; he'd had more to drink than the others, that must be it.

Peter's hand came for the bottle again, and for a second or two as he felt Peter's fingers against his own, Brendan didn't let go.

"Give over," Peter said, and Brendan let him have it, and heard him swallow, and felt his touch again as he handed it back. "That's me done, Bren. Night then."

Brendan was well used to Peter's Derry-boy accent, but he noticed it now: the way his tongue curled around his name when he said it, _Bren_, curving the vowel. He heard him settle into his sleeping bag and zip it up.

He felt uncomfortable. He shifted his position as he sat, but there was a dull ache in his groin that didn't ease. He drank again, and licked a drip from the bottle's rim, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

How much longer did they have? One more night after this, and then they'd be back to the city, and whenever he saw Peter they would go their separate ways after the last job of the day or the last drink. Sometimes they'd shake hands when they parted; sometimes when they got to the corner, Peter would put a hand on Brendan's shoulder: _Night, mate; _and there'd be a sensation like hunger in Brendan's stomach as he walked away.

He listened as Peter's breathing deepened as he fell asleep. He could touch him now, touch his hair with the tips of his fingers, and Peter would never know. But why would he want to do that?

Brendan needed a piss. He screwed the cap back onto the whiskey bottle, then pulled his jeans back on and his waterproof jacket, and put on his trainers. The tent was far too low to stand up in, so he crouched as he unzipped the flap and went out through it. He made for the shelter of the trees. For a minute he couldn't pee – perhaps he hadn't wanted to go after all – but eventually it came. When he finished he hurried through the rain back towards the tent. The night air and the cool rain made him feel a little less drunk.

Peter must have woken up: there was a dim glow of torchlight showing through the canvas as Brendan returned.

He ducked back in. Peter was sitting up.

"You left the door open, I got a fucking shower."

"Door?"

"Thing. Hole."

"Flap."

"Flap." Peter laughed.

Brendan laughed too, and sat back down on his sleeping bag. Peter laid the torch down so it pointed away from them, but they could still make each other out in its pale light. His arms were wrapped around his knees; Brendan dragged his eyes away from the smooth contour of his biceps, and opened the whisky bottle again. He offered it to Peter, who hesitated.

"Go on mate," Brendan said, and Peter capitulated and took a drink, and shook his head as he passed the bottle back.

"Seriously, Bren, I'm all in. Only got one more day here, I don't wanna be too hung over to enjoy it." He lay back and pulled his unzipped sleeping bag over him.

Brendan had another mouthful of whiskey. Maybe Peter was feeling it too, that time was running out, that what they had left was precious.

"It's been good," he said, more to himself than to Peter.

"You alright?" Peter turned his head to look at Brendan. "It's not over yet."

"Yeah. It's just, there's... when we go back, there's fucking people, they don't... Fucking people, and you can't even... they don't even let you breathe sometimes, you know?" Did Peter know?

"Why don't you get some sleep, Bren, yeah? Sleep the drink off."

"D'you understand though, Peter? There's things you want to... but people, they tell you you can't, and..." And you know they're right, and you know the things you want are wrong, but you still want them, and you're terrified of what that makes you.

"Aye, fucking rules. Less rules now though, Brendan, now we're not at school any more."

Peter felt it too, then? Maybe everybody did. Maybe everybody felt it, but no-one ever said it, because if you said it out loud it made it real, and everyone was scared of what people would say. All the people, hiding away for fear of all the people, and it was one big fucking secret, and the secret was that what everyone felt and what everyone said were two different things.

Brendan gulped down another slug of whiskey, and it made him cough. Peter sat up and slapped him on the back until he stopped.

"Thanks."

"Okay now?" Peter's hand rested on the back of Brendan's neck.

Brendan turned towards him. Peter's face was out of focus, and Brendan touched it to feel if it was real. And it was real, and so Brendan kissed him.

Peter fell backwards away from him.

"No, Peter." No, Peter just had to know that it was okay, that Brendan knew about the secret.

Brendan got hold of his arms and pushed him down, and tried to kiss him again.

"Brendan! Fucking hell." Peter got Brendan off him with one almighty shove. "Jesus, what the fuck are you doing? You're a fucking queer now, are you?"

And Brendan was gone. He grabbed his jacket and fought his way out of the tent. His head spun, and he tripped over one of the guy ropes outside. He heard his keys fall out of the jacket pocket, and scrabbled in the mud for them, and got to his feet and headed for his car. The car doors were open, but his hands shook as he tried to get the key into the ignition, and he heard Peter, his voice getting nearer.

"Brendan! I'm sorry, just wait, will you?"

As the engine started, Peter opened the passenger door and jumped in.

"Get out, Peter."

"You can't drive, Bren, you've been drinking all night - "

"Get out!"

Peter reached for the ignition key; Brendan elbowed him, and drove.

"For fucksake, Bren, will you stop?"

The car bumped over the grass and crunched across a footpath. The wipers barely made a difference to the view through the windscreen. Brendan steered to the left and skirted the trees, and then when they came to the road, he swerved onto it.

The road surface was awash with rain. The car skidded, but Brendan managed to get control. He didn't know where he was heading, but he didn't slow down.

"Just stop, Brendan, will you? Look, it's okay, I'm not gonna - "

There was a lorry in the beam of the headlights, its great black bulk coming towards them on the other side of the road. What if the car skidded again? Brendan put his foot down hard on the accelerator.

The last thing he remembered was Peter's hand on his, on the wheel, trying to stop him turning it.

And then, the sound of rain.

Trying to work out what had happened. Somehow the car had turned around, so that its nearside was caught under the wheelbase of the lorry. Brendan looked to his left. It was too dark to see if there was any blood, but Peter's body seemed to be bent out of shape.

"Peter. Peter."

He was dead, must be. Why, though? Why was it Peter that was dead?

Brendan opened the door and climbed out, and held on to the roof of the car when his legs buckled. He looked up and saw the lorry driver clambering across his cab to get out of the other side.

He let go of the car. He couldn't stand up, he couldn't walk: and then he could, and he ran.


	16. Chapter 16

There wasn't a hope in hell of getting back to sleep. Remembering the night of the crash had left Brendan exhausted but agitated, and eventually he admitted defeat and got up. He folded up the sofa bed and then went for a shower, and felt marginally better afterwards. He pulled a pair of tracksuit bottoms out of his holdall and put them on, then he binned the debris of last night's Chinese, and the empty whiskey bottles, and took the plates and glasses into the kitchen to wash them up.

He heard Pete come out of his bedroom and go into the bathroom, and when Brendan was drying the dishes, Pete joined him in the kitchen.

"How's your head?" Pete asked.

"Mashed. Yours?"

"I've felt better."

"Coffee's done." Brendan poured two mugfuls from the percolator.

"Cheers. Milk in mine. Three sugars."

Three? Brendan spooned it into Pete's mug. Stephen liked four sugars, if it was one of those large-sized cups from a coffee shop: any less and he'd wrinkle his nose.

He sat down at the table with Pete.

"There you go."

"Thanks. What's your plans then, Brendan? Heading back to England today?"

"Dunno. Don't think so, no."

"You've got to go back sometime, or are you gonna be a drifter now? At least let your Cheryl know you're okay. Eileen too, while you're at it, so she can tell your lads."

"I said I'm going back, didn't I?"

"Aye you did, but when?"

"Jesus, Peter. Couple of days, tops. Warren Fox needs to get his."

"That's it, is it? All the people you could be thinking about, and Warren's the one, top of the list. How about learning from the past, Brendan? How about getting off that merry-go- round?"

"I gotta get even, Peter. It's what we do."

Pete shook his head. Brendan sounded resigned, trapped in a war that he knew was pointless but that was too entrenched to pull out of.

"For fucksake be clever, then. Cleverer than him anyways. Let Warren be the one that's put away, not you."

"Out-fox Foxy?" Brendan knew it made sense.

"How hard can it be?" Pete smiled, and then was serious again. "Your kids don't need a lifer for a dad, Bren."

"I know. I know." He topped up Pete's coffee and his own.

"Got to concentrate on the positives, mate. That's one thing I've had to learn."

"This wisdom thing, Peter? It's fucking irritating."

Pete grinned.

"You know I'm right. You've got a chance now, Brendan, take stock, work out what's important. You don't need to run any more. Lynsey told me even Declan knows you're gay now, that right? How'd he take it?"

"He... he was good as gold."

"I'm happy for you, Brendan."

"_Happy_? Wish I was." What did it even mean, being happy? If he sorted Warren out, got him out of the club for good; if he looked after Cheryl and Lynsey; if he made up to Declan and Padraig for all his absence and lies: would he be happy then?

"Like I said then," Pete said, "Fresh start. You've got a lot going for you, you've just built your walls too high for you to see it."

"Give it a rest." Brendan gulped at his coffee.

"It's up to you. You can go back, get your revenge on Warren, maybe get yourself sent down in the process, if that's the kind of man you want to be. Or you can use your brains, think about the things you've got, the people who still give a fuck about you, and try and deserve them."

"I'm not going back inside."

"Glad to hear it."

"There's things Warren's done, rumours. Things he'd get life for, if I got the proof."

"Legally."

"Yes Mr Hamill."

"So you're not gonna go in, all guns blazing?"

"No." Brendan realised he was telling Pete the truth. "No I'm not. Maybe I'm a changed man."

"About bloody time if you are. You never know, if you manage to keep your fists to yourself, Ste might even give you another chance."

Brendan stood abruptly and took their mugs to the sink. With his back to Pete, he shut his eyes for a moment, and breathed.

"Who says I want him to?"

"Your body language, for one. What else are you gonna do? Find another lad to take his place, and hope feelings don't come into it next time?"

"I don't need anyone."

"Looks like it." Pete watched a droplet of sweat run down Brendan's bare back.

"Anyway, Stephen ain't... He hates me, doesn't he, so..."

"You sure about that? He gave you plenty of chances before, didn't he? Who says he won't again, if he sees you've changed?"

Brendan turned to face Pete.

"He thought I did it, Peter, okay? He thought I went out and tracked Rae down and strangled her, and drove around with her dead body in the boot of my car. That sound to you like he'd want me back? Because it sure as fuck don't to me."

"Sorry, mate. I didn't know that."

"Yeah, well, there's a lot you don't know. Stephen, he's... he's got plenty of reasons for not trusting me, I get that. But thinking I could do a thing like that? It's like he don't know me at all, and I thought..." Brendan's voice trailed off, and he stared at the floor.

"You love him, don't you."

"Oh, you think so?" Brendan said, and jabbed his finger at his temple angrily. "He's in _here_, Peter, every fucking day. You think that's _love_ do you?"

"Aye, sounds about right."

"You can keep it then."

:::::::

Pete returned to the kitchen after he'd got ready for work, and found Brendan dressed now and sitting with another cup of coffee.

"I've got to get off now, Brendan. Look, if you want to stay another night, you can. My girlfriend's coming over after work but she'll be fine with it: you're surprisingly house-trained."

"Girlfriend, yeah? Didn't take you long after you moved back."

"I knew her before. Remember Jane McGrath, year below us at school? She got in touch a few months back. She was living in the States, but she came back just after I came home, and we..."

"Picked up where you left off?"

"My good looks, how could she resist?"

"Yeah." If Peter had been a bit more resistible all those years ago, everything would have been different.

"Yeah." Pete realised what Brendan was thinking. "Anyhow, the offer's there."

"What?"

"A bed for the night."

"Right. I won't, thanks. Got things to do before I go back to England."

"Fair enough." Pete paused, then spoke carefully. "Look, Bren, you can tell me to mind my own business again, but isn't it worth trying to talk to Ste, get his side of things? At least clear the air so you can let it go if that's what you both want."

Pete noticed a muscle twitch in Brendan's cheek: that lad really was his Achilles heel.

"I ain't much for talking, Peter."

"You've not done badly, last night and today."

"It's not the same." Not the same at all, because Peter couldn't reach into Brendan's chest and hold his heart in his hand.

:::::::

Brendan picked up his holdall from the living room, and the two men left the flat and went down the ramp to Pete's car.

"You going to ring Eileen, let her and the kids know you're okay?"

Brendan couldn't say yes. How could he tell his wife he was okay, if he wasn't even sure that he was?

"I don't want you calling her, okay, Peter? Not her, and not anyone else either. I'll do it in my own time."

"I won't ring her, but if she calls me again I'm not lying for you, Brendan. Lynsey and Cheryl too. I'm done with that."

Brendan nodded.

"Alright."

Pete got himself and his wheelchair into his car, brushing aside Brendan's attempt to give him a hand.

"Can I drop you anywhere?"

"I'm okay on my own."

"So you keep saying." Pete held out his hand. "Good luck, Brendan. Keep in touch."

Brendan shook his hand.

"Thanks, Peter, for... you know."

"I know."

:::::::

It was early enough that Brendan had time to get to the cafe, the one he'd been to the week before last, in time to see his sons walk past on their way to school. He ordered a breakfast while he was waiting: all he'd had this morning was too much coffee, and his hangover headache was returning in force. Maybe a plate piled high with fried food would take the edge off.

This time when his sons came into view, their mother was with them for some reason. She was in a fake fur jacket and skinny jeans, and although her boots had tall heels, Declan towered over her and it looked like it wouldn't be long before Padraig did too. Brendan felt proud seeing them, not just of his boys but of Eileen too somehow. She'd be the sexiest mum at the school gates.

He was still eating his breakfast when he saw her heading back home fifteen or twenty minutes later; she was on the far side of the road, and stopped to look in the window of a shoe shop. Brendan got out his mobile and dialled her number. He saw her dig into her shoulder bag for her phone, and as he changed his mind and was about to hang up, she answered.

"Hello?"

Brendan didn't speak, but watched as Eileen looked at her phone's display – it would say _Unknown number_ – and put it to her ear again.

"Eileen, it's me."

He saw her hand go to her mouth. It was a few moments before she spoke.

"Where in God's name have you been?"

"Away. Just wanted to let you know I'm... How are the boys? How are you?"

"Worried sick, Brendan, how do you _think_ I am? How do you think _they_ are, with their daddy disappeared off the face of the Earth?"

"They know, then? You told them I'm out, they know I was fitted up, right?"

He heard Eileen sigh.

"Course they know. I told them as soon as I heard after that hearing. They thought you'd be home to see them, Brendan. Why weren't you?"

"I couldn't let them see me, Eileen, okay?" Brendan lowered his voice, aware of the people at other tables within earshot. "I got pretty beat up, didn't I. Didn't want them to see me like that."

Eileen's anger retreated a little.

"I heard about that. You okay now?"

"Getting there."

"You still could've phoned, Brendan." There was fire in her voice again. "Declan knows you're missing; I told Paddy you were too busy working to come home, and he swallowed it for a while – well he would, wouldn't he, he's had a lifetime of it – but he's starting to ask why you never phone him. What am I meant to tell him, Brendan? More lies?"

She was on a roll. Brendan rested his elbows on the table and his forehead on one fist, his eyes closed.

"You can tell him I had to go away, and the police kept my phone so I didn't have anyone's number."

"Is that true, about your phone?"

"Yeah."

"But you've got it back now. So does that mean you're back in Chester?"

"No."

"So how'd you get my number now then?"

Shit.

"Someone gave it to me, didn't they. Does it matter, Eileen, really?"

"Who? Who have you got in touch with? Cheryl said she'd call me as soon as she heard anything - "

"It wasn't Cheryl. I ain't spoken to her." He willed Eileen not to pursue the question, because he could hardly tell her he'd got her number from Macca. "I'm going back tomorrow, so I don't want you calling her either, okay? Okay, Eileen? I gotta bite that bullet myself."

There was another pause, and Brendan looked out of the window again. Eileen had moved, she had walked a few metres and was now perched on a seat at the bus stop directly opposite the cafe, her back rigid.

"Okay, Brendan."

"Thanks, sweetheart. You can tell the boys I'll call them in a day or two."

"You going to tell me where you are now?"

"Does it matter?" Brendan could see Eileen's anger rising again, even at this distance. "London."

"I suppose _he_ knows where you've been." Her voice tightened. "Has he been with you?"

"What? Who?"

"That... _boy_. Your... whatever he is. God, I don't even know the word for it."

"Stephen. His name's Stephen. And no, he's not... he's not with me, okay?" Why would Eileen even think that?

"Trouble in Paradise, is it?"

Her tone was familiar to Brendan. It was one he'd heard with increasing frequency over the years they were together, and he hated it, hated _her_ when she was bitchy. Why did she have to get like that?

"Drop it, Eileen."

"Hit a nerve, have I? Declan told me you have your ups and downs."

"What?"

"Oh yes, Declan's full of stories about you, Brendan. You and your... _barman_."

"How did he..? He didn't even know til the day before he left that I'm..."

"He's not stupid, Brendan. He thought back, I suppose, once he knew about you. It's on his mind, d'you know that? Everything he saw of you and that person, he now thinks it was part of some big love story. Can you believe it? That's what you've done to our son."

"Eileen, I swear to you, I never meant him to know, on my life."

"Too late, isn't it. And d'you know what the worst of it is?"

"No. But I guess you're gonna tell me."

"He _likes_ him. Declan likes that _boyfriend_ of yours. Thinks the sun shines out of him."

"He's not my - "

"Yeah, apparently he's funny, and cool, and God knows what else. So congratulations, Brendan." Eileen's voice dripped with sarcasm. "Looks like you've found yourself a keeper."

"You know what, Eileen? You can - "

"So you've got your barman, and I've got my Michael, and do _you_ know what, Brendan? Now I know what I was missing in all those years with you."

"Enough!" The hum of chatter and the clinking of cutlery stopped, and the cafe was briefly silent. "I'll ring the kids, end of the week."

He ended the call, and saw Eileen look at her phone and put it away in her bag. She got out a tissue and dabbed at her eyes, then stood up, hesitated, and then hurried off in the direction of home. Brendan watched her until she disappeared around the corner.

Declan _liked_ Stephen. Brendan knew he had done, but still, after finding out that he was... that he and Brendan had been together?

What was it that Eileen had said? _Apparently he's funny, and cool, and God knows what else_.

He was _funny_, Stephen. Didn't mean to be, most of the time; got sulky if you laughed at him, like if he was dancing in that way of his, loads of enthusiasm but no coordination. Like that night when you took him out drinking and brought him back to yours, and he danced on the doorstep as you fumbled with your keys. You were fumbling because you knew. You knew that this night was a turning point, that it was either the start of something or the end before it had begun, because if it all went wrong you'd have to excise him from your life. He was _funny_, oblivious to the tension in the air, pulling faces, talking about women, but you didn't laugh because the heat of his body beside you burned through his shirt, and his eyes shone, and he looked at you as if you were what you wished you were. And when his lips found yours, they tasted of your whiskey.

He wasn't _cool_, Stephen, although to be fair his tastes were maturing. The thing was, he didn't think he was cool, didn't try to be; didn't care if he was or wasn't. It wasn't on his radar, because that wasn't what his life was like. You're hazy on the details, but you know he had a rough start and has survived some shit: and look at the man he is now.

… _And God knows what else._

_What else_ is the things he is, the things that have got you in their grip, and you don't think you'll ever be free.

It's the memory of him when you close your eyes. The smoothness of his skin as you ran your tongue all the way up his spine til he writhed beneath you as you bit the nape of his neck, his hair bristling against your lips. Or the way he turned foul-mouthed when you were in him, his limbs pulling you deeper, his fingernails scoring into your back, the inside of him clenching violently around you; making you his like no-one else had ever done.

_What else_ is the look of him. When he didn't know you were watching, and he was at work or across the street, and the sight of him sparked a flame in the core of you that proved that on that day in the summer, in those few hours when everything seemed possible and he came back to you, the thing you'd told him had been true. _What else_ was his face when he was on his back, his eyes screwed shut, biting his lip between cries, the skin round his mouth red raw from your stubble; and when you told him – because you needed him to – to open his eyes, the look in them, like you were his world and he was yours.

The guts of him, facing up to you. Knowing what you were capable of, but still arguing, still figuring out what was right and wrong and standing up for himself and for other people too. For Rae, even, when you laid into her. That was the _what_ _else_, too: the fierceness of the little bastard.

Brendan pushed away his plate and stood up. Outside the cafe he paused, thinking that he'd left something behind. No, he had his bag and his mobile and his money; but as he walked away, he couldn't shake the feeling that he'd lost something.


	17. Chapter 17

Macca had come home from his day at his nan's and his night at his boyfriend's, knowing that Brendan would be gone. He'd said he was going, that morning two Sundays ago as Macca and Liam had left. _I'll be gone,_ Brendan had said, _I'll be leaving you lovebirds to it_, and it was calculated to sting: Macca saw it in his eyes, that flat, cold cruelty that always used to hurt more than a punch.

Brendan had been jealous, that was obvious. Jealous that Macca had a family to go to for Sunday dinner, and he didn't, and that Macca had a boyfriend who loved him, and he didn't. Maybe there was a little bit of jealousy too, that Liam had more than taken his place in Macca's life; but that wouldn't be because Brendan wanted him back. Macca had had to accept a long time ago that Brendan didn't want him any more. No, it was his possessiveness, simple as that: Brendan didn't like anyone else playing with his toys, even ones that he'd long since broken and discarded.

Still Macca had hoped that Brendan would have changed his mind, and that when he returned to his flat on that Monday morning he'd have found Brendan there, taking up space, eating everything in the fridge, being funny, being moody, being _present._ Macca had hated himself for wanting it, and hated himself more for the bitter sense of disappointment when, inevitably, he'd found the flat empty.

There was a note on the coffee table, scrawled in Brendan's sloping, left-handed handwriting: _Will pay back what I owe you when I come to pick up my things. Thanks for_ – then a word was scribbled out, it looked like _being_ but it wasn't clear – _helping me out. BB._

So he would be coming back.

Macca had gone into the bedroom and found that his bed was unmade. Brendan must have slept in it that Sunday night before he left. In the wardrobe, Liam's clothes were shoved aside and Brendan's suit hung in the middle, and in a drawer there was a plastic bag with some papers and bits and pieces, which Macca resisted the temptation to look through.

Macca had left the bed unmade, and that night he'd slept in the hollow Brendan had left.

That was more than a week ago, and each day since, Macca had hoped to find Brendan there when he got in from work. Once or twice he'd been at home and the front door had opened, and even though he knew Liam might be calling round, a part of him wanted it to be Brendan.

Today, it was.

Macca was just coming out of the kitchen with a cup of tea and a plate of toast when the door opened and Brendan walked in, dropped his bag on the floor, shrugged off his leather jacket and took the plate from Macca's hand.

"You timed that well," Macca said, hoping Brendan couldn't hear his heart thudding.

"Didn't I just," Brendan said through a mouthful of toast.

"You'll be wanting a cup of tea to go with my toast then, will you?"

Macca went and made another cup, and put some more toast on. Brendan followed him to the kitchen and leaned against the door frame.

"Lover boy not around then, no?"

"He's got a name, Brendan. And he's at work, you know, like normal people."

"Okay."

Macca handed Brendan his mug, and took his empty plate.

"So, where did you go to in the end? Dublin?"

"Yeah. West coast for a bit too, get some fresh air in me lungs."

"Get back this morning, did you?"

"Yesterday." Brendan watched Macca take that in. His curiosity was transparent.

"You could have come back here, Brendan. You didn't have to pay out for a B&B."

"I didn't stay at a B&B, so."

"Right." So had Brendan pulled? Or did he have someone else, another old flame in this city that Macca didn't even know about, who'd offered him a bed just like he had?

"Had a nice chat with Eileen, by the way," Brendan said.

"Oh yeah?" Maybe he hadn't been with a lad then. "Must've gone well anyway."

"Not exactly."

"She still let you stay though." Macca was fishing.

"No, I only talked to her on the phone." Brendan was enjoying this. "Didn't go round there."

"So where did you stay last night then?" Macca asked, and wished he didn't need to know.

"With a mate."

What mate? He couldn't ask. Shouldn't.

"Anyone I know?" he asked limply.

Macca felt Brendan approach him from behind as he busied himself buttering the fresh toast; a hand snaked round and nicked a slice.

"Ask a lot of questions, don't you," Brendan said from inches away, then he took a bite of toast and Macca felt a scattering of crumbs drop onto his shoulder.

"Just making conversation."

Brendan laughed and moved away. He wanted an invitation to stay, so it was time to start playing nicely. He took a few gulps of tea.

"Cheers for this."

"No problem." Macca's tone was terse.

"You alright, son?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

They went into the front room.

"I've got that money I owed you." Brendan got an envelope of cash out of his holdall, and handed it over. "Some of it's in euros, but it's all there."

"Thanks." Macca didn't count it: on this at least, he trusted Brendan.

They sat.

"So how was it, your dinner round your nan's that day? Made him feel like one of the family, did she?" Be nice: "Your Liam?"

"Aye, yeah, she made an effort. Liam gets along with most people though."

"Even my mother-in-law."

Macca smiled.

"Yeah." Better tell Brendan who else was there, in case he'd already heard it from Eileen – wouldn't want to be accused of holding out on him. "Eileen and your boys were there too."

From the look on Brendan's face this was news to him.

"You didn't tell her you'd seen me? Liam didn't tell her?"

"No, I said we wouldn't, didn't I?" Between them, in an awkward alliance, Macca and Eileen had closed down the conversation whenever Brendan's name had come up. "Better things to talk about."

Brendan considered this for a moment, and decided it was the truth. If Eileen had heard that he'd been in town, she definitely would have mentioned it on the phone earlier this morning when he'd lied to her about his whereabouts.

"My lads, how were they?"

"Grand, yeah."

"Declan say anything? About me being out?"

"Of prison or the closet?"

"Funny ain't you, Macca." Stay calm. "Both. Either."

"Paddy said he wished you'd phone."

"I will. I'm gonna, I just..."

"Declan didn't say anything... contentious. I reckon Eileen warned him not to say anything in front of his brother, or his nan."

"Or you."

"Maybe. Can of worms, I s'pose." Macca paused. "He did speak to me though, Bren. On our own, like."

"If you said a word, Macca, about you and me, one word, I swear - "

"I didn't." Macca fought the familiar panic that started to rise in him as Brendan seemed to get physically bigger with the beginnings of rage. "I didn't, Brendan. I wouldn't."

Brendan could always tell when Macca was lying, and on this occasion, he wasn't. He consciously controlled his anger.

"What he say to you then? He spoke to you, you said."

"He knows I'm gay, doesn't he. He just wanted to tell me that you were; asked if I knew."

"And you said..?"

"I said I had no idea."

Brendan nodded shortly. Always a new set of lies, even when you tried to do the right thing. It was hard to keep track of who knew what, who believed what.

"Okay."

"I think he just wanted reassurance, Bren, you know? It's hard for him to get his head around it, having a dad who's gay all of a sudden."

"I know. Poor bastard don't deserve this." Brendan felt worn out.

"I told him you're still the same dad."

"For all that's worth."

It was disconcerting when Brendan was like this. Morose self-pity didn't suit him: Macca preferred him angry.

"He said you had a fella."

"What?"

"Yeah, he was talking about Ste. Said he didn't know if you were together, but he got the feeling you had a kind of on, off thing going on. That right, Brendan? On or off is it?"

"Shut up, Macca."

That was more like it. Better not push any more though.

They sat in silence for a minute.

"What's your plans now, Bren? Going back to England?"

"Yeah. See if there's anything left of my fucking club."

"Thought it was Cheryl's club?"

"You're behind the times, son. Chez has only got two per cent now. I've got forty-nine."

"Who's got the rest?"

"Fat fuck from Manchester. Not for much longer though." The thought of Warren Fox made Brendan decide. "I'm heading back tomorrow I reckon."

Tomorrow. Macca nodded: this was it then. It wouldn't happen again, would it? Brendan needing a place to hide out and finding his way to Macca's; Brendan needing him.

"You can stay here tonight then, Brendan, if you like. I'll be off to work in a bit, so you'll have the place to yourself til late."

"That's good of you, son, thanks." Result.

:::::::

Brendan got an early night. After Macca had left for work at lunchtime, he'd gone out too and spent two hours in the gym. The decision finally to finish his period of exile had filled him with an adrenalin-fuelled restlessness, and he had channelled it into a relentless workout which succeeded in keeping the fear at bay. Then he'd walked back to the flat and watched a couple of films, and eaten, and drunk a lot of whiskey, and given in to exhaustion by about ten o'clock.

He went to Macca's bed. It would be up to Macca when he got in from work later, he could kick Brendan out of bed or take the sofa himself.

:::::::

The flat was silent when Macca got home not long after eleven. A glass stood on the coffee table, and a half empty bottle of Jameson's; the kitchen was a mess. When he opened his bedroom door, there was just enough light coming through the blind from the streetlamp outside the window, to see that Brendan was asleep in the bed.

Macca went for a shower. Nothing was going to happen. He was over Brendan, and Brendan was over him.

He would let Brendan stay in the bed, and sleep on the sofa himself. He just needed to get a blanket and something to wear, so he padded into the bedroom and groped in a drawer for boxers and a T-shirt, and put them on.

Then he got into bed. Well, it was his bed after all, and they were both adults, and they had both moved on. And even if Brendan made a move – which he wouldn't, but if he did – Macca was with Liam now, so he would turn him down. That was one thing he would say for Brendan, he always took no for an answer, or at least he only ever used persuasion to turn a _no_ into a _yes, _never force. That was the winning card, the Ace up Brendan's sleeve, that for all his strength, for all his violence, when Macca was with him – really with him, and he guessed it was the same for that Vinnie, probably, and Ste too, and whoever else there'd been in Brendan's bed over the years – it felt like the safest place in the world.

Brendan had woken from a dream and was half asleep when he felt the cover move and the mattress dip, and he was confused momentarily, but then remembered where he was, and realised who it was.

He liked it.

He'd always liked it, the feel of someone beside him as he slept. That was what he'd loved when he first got with Eileen: hearing her breathing in the night, feeling the warmth of her body, the softness. Holding her in his arms, once she'd got used to the idea that almost always she'd be held, and maybe kissed, but that was all. Protecting her.

Vincent had spent a lot of nights with him, because Brendan had had a flat to himself in Liverpool so there was no danger of being discovered. He had only ever spent a couple of nights with Macca, though, and only a handful with Stephen.

Brendan had still slept with Stephen beside him, though. Whenever they had sex in a bed, as opposed to a bunk-up in the toilets or over the office desk, or against a wall somewhere, he always fell asleep, if only for a few minutes. It wasn't from exhaustion, or not always anyway: it was more like a sated contentment, like a big cat succumbing to sleep after a kill, the taste of its prey in its mouth.

:::::::

The body that was with him when he woke was Stephen's. Brendan was lying on his left side, and the boy's back lay flush against his chest and stomach, and Brendan had a leg slung over both of Stephen's, and Stephen's head was a dead weight on Brendan's left arm which was stretched out across the pillow. Brendan's spare hand rested on his bony hip.

Two hours earlier, Brendan was up and out to see in a delivery at the club; his intention was to go back home to bed for a couple of hours, as he'd worked until two in the morning and he needed his sleep. He dropped into Price Slice on the way home from Chez Chez to pick up some milk, and found himself hiding in one aisle when he spotted Amy Barnes in the other. He couldn't deal with that girl at this time in the morning.

"You can choose one thing each to have on the bus, and one thing to take for grandad," he heard Amy say.

Her children responded excitedly.

Brendan loitered while she paid, then followed her out of the shop to make sure that they were heading in the direction of the bus stop. Then he took the steps up to his flat three at a time; put the milk away, pausing for a second when he realised he'd left the shop without paying; and went to his bedroom to get what he needed from the back of the drawer.

The walk to the estate didn't take long.

He knocked on the door quietly at first, and then loudly. Stephen must have been up – he wouldn't have slept through Amy and the kids getting ready to go out – but it looked like he'd gone back to bed. Eventually the curtain in the kitchen window twitched, and a moment later Stephen opened the door.

He was in a sleeveless vest that would have started out white but had greyed from years of washes. He had on a pair of striped, baggy boxers, and black socks, one of which was pulled up and the other in danger of coming off. His eyes were puffy with sleep, his hair was a mess, and he smelt mustily of bed. The corner of his mouth was crusty where he must have drooled as he slept.

He was the sexiest thing Brendan had ever seen in his life.

"What do you want?" Stephen asked unnecessarily. He was holding a glass of water, and took a sip and swirled it around in his mouth: because he knew he was going to be kissed, didn't he, and knew he had morning breath but didn't know that Brendan would take him as he was.

"Amy's out for the day, then," Brendan stated.

"How do you know?" Suspicion was all over Stephen's face.

Always so fucking arsey.

"Saw her in the village. You gonna ask me in?"

"You don't usually wait to be asked."

"Fair point." Brendan walked in past Stephen, watched him shut the door; took the glass of water from him and set it down.

"I was in bed."

Then Stephen had done that thing he did with his eyes, looking up at Brendan through his fringe of lashes. Looking... what was the word? _Wanton._

"Wanton," Brendan said out loud.

"You what?"

"Nothing." And his hand went to the back of Stephen's neck, and his tongue to the back of his throat.

They broke apart, breathless, and Stephen wriggled out of Brendan's grip.

"Just need the toilet."

"Don't be long."

Brendan went to Stephen's room. The bed was still warm from when the boy had got out of it. He yanked the cover off onto the floor because he didn't want him covered up, he wanted to see him. He took off his jacket and got his condoms and lube out of the pocket of it, then sat on the edge to take his shoes and socks off, and waited, and remembered the first time they'd fucked in this bed, when Stephen had been brand new but had taken to it like he'd been waiting all his life for it. For him.

When Stephen came to him, he tasted of toothpaste. They rolled on the bed then, Stephen's hands fumbling with Brendan's belt, unbuckling; unzipping, and delving into his boxers, both hands grasping at his cock and balls. Jesus. Brendan got off him, pulled Stephen's boxers down and off, taking one sock with them. Pushed up his vest and kissed his belly; got as much of a handful of flesh as there was to grab, and bit it; and bit the hip where there was a tattoo, and bit the hip where there wasn't.

The skin of his cock was smooth and tight on Brendan's tongue. As Brendan sucked him, Stephen curled his fingers in Brendan's hair and jabbed his tip into his throat with a jerk of his pelvis. Brendan pulled away and got off the bed, watching the boy frown at him in frustration as he stripped his own clothes off and put a rubber on. Then he lay down on his back.

"On you get."

"Yes boss." Stephen knelt astride him, grinning.

"Other way around."

"What?"

"Face the other way."

"Why?"

"Wanna have a look, don't I."

Stephen repositioned to face Brendan's feet, knees either side of his thighs. He pulled his vest off over his head. Brendan ran his hands over the boy's back, his thumbs tracing the bumps of his vertebrae. His skin was hot.

"Want me to..?" Stephen picked up the tube of lube.

"I'll do it. Lean forward."

Brendan lubed him up. Stephen's moans started as the first thumb went in, and turned to open-mouthed gasps as the second one did. Brendan rubbed him and toyed with him and opened him, and when he was ready he guided him on.

Stephen took over then, rising and falling, circling, tightening, teasing: teasing himself too, not touching his own cock.

"Stephen, come on," Brendan pleaded with him. "Fucksake, you gonna..?"

And finally the boy relented and – with a scream that must have startled the whole estate – he forced himself down heavily until he held every inch inside him, and his body spasmed and shook.

Brendan's own voice sounded strange to him, dense and urgent. _You fucking... you're... Fuck. Jesus, Stephen, fuck..._

He bent Stephen forward with a shove to the middle of his back, and felt him take hold of his ankles. Brendan wanted to look at the taut stretch of Stephen's hole as it swallowed his cock, and the boy knew it, and watched him over his shoulder, his face curious and triumphant as he slid himself back and forth. He let go of Brendan's ankles then to jerk himself off, and Brendan got him by the hips and pulled him down hard, and came in him as he yelled.

When Brendan went to the bathroom to flush the condom, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror: his eyes were vivid with life.

He found Stephen sprawled face down on the bed when he returned. Brendan had had what he'd come for; he should get dressed and go home, and go back to bed to catch up on his sleep like he'd intended. But this bed would do just as well, wouldn't it? He picked up the cover from the floor, lay down beside Stephen, and pulled it over them both.

And now, he'd woken up and they were _spooning._ Their bodies had found each other in their sleep, and Stephen was nestled against him, his head pillowed on Brendan's arm.

If Brendan crooked his arm around the boy's slender throat, it wouldn't take much force to snap his neck. He wondered if Stephen had weighed up the risks and decided to give Brendan the benefit of the doubt, and if he had – if he'd asked himself that question – the fact he had to ask it was as good as an accusation, and what did that make Brendan, some kind of monster? And what did that make Stephen, for opening himself to him again and again? Brendan's stomach knotted with – what? Anger, must be. No other feeling would be this strong.

"You're awake then." Stephen's voice was soft, and his hair was soft as his head nudged backwards and met Brendan's lips, and his skin was soft as he shifted lazily against Brendan's body.

"Didn't go to sleep," Brendan said into his hair.

"Yeah you did. You were snoring."

"Fuck off. I don't snore."

"Yeah you do." Stephen made a loud, spluttering snoring noise. "That's you, that is."

Stephen laughed, and Brendan pulled him tighter against him, his flaccid cock pressing against the crack of Stephen's arse, and the boy took hold of Brendan's hand and brought it to his mouth and sucked on its fingers, and hugged his arm against his chest. Brendan bit down on his shoulder, and breathed in the scent of him as he made his mark, and Stephen softly moaned.

:::::::

Brendan liked it, the feeling of a warm body breathing beside him as he slept. He could pull Macca into his arms – the kid wouldn't object, or he wouldn't have climbed into bed with him – and sleep with him there. It would be a kind of comfort, after months of isolation from any kind of human touch that wasn't violent. He looked across at him, and remembered how willing he'd always been, how forgiving. It would be easy to reach out to him.

But it was the wrong body.

Brendan turned his back on Macca, and didn't wake again until morning.


	18. Chapter 18

"My god."

Liam stood in the doorway of his boyfriend's bedroom and looked down at him.

Macca was curled up in bed, and woke up at the sound of Liam's voice. After a moment of disorientation he smiled up at him drowsily, and then registered the expression on his face: Liam looked as if he couldn't believe his eyes. And then Macca remembered, and looked over his shoulder, and there was Brendan asleep on the other side of the bed, his back towards him and his head obscured by the cover.

Shit.

"It's okay, Liam," Macca said in a whisper – the last thing he wanted was for Brendan to wake up, because who knew what he would say or do – "It's only Brendan."

"It's - " Liam was incredulous. "It's _only_ Brendan? That's meant to make it _better_?"

"He came back yesterday, I just offered him a bed for the night, that's all."

"Yeah, I can see that, Macca." Liam wasn't going to keep his voice down, even if Macca was.

"I didn't know he was gonna be in my bed whan I got in from work, did I?" Macca hissed. "I thought he'd be on the sofa."

"So?"

"So I could hardly kick him out now, could I?"

"Yes you could! Or you could have left him there and slept on the sofa yourself, or did that not occur to you? My god, this is just..." Liam ran his hands through his hair.

Brendan was awake. He'd come round gradually, aware first of all of voices, and then of his headache from yesterday's whiskey and a night crowded by dreams, and then of whose the voices were and what they were saying; and finally that he had a morning semi, so springing out of bed wasn't really an option under the circumstances.

He rolled onto his back, rubbed his eyes, and looked laconically from Macca to Liam.

"Morning, gentlemen." He closed his eyes again.

"My god," Liam said again, "Is that all you've got to say?"

"Leave it, Liam, yeah?" Macca got out of bed and went to him, glad that he'd opted to put on some boxers and a T-shirt before he got into bed last night.

Liam shrugged Macca's hand off his arm.

"Leave it? No. No, I want to hear what you've got to say for yourself, Macca, and him too. Well?"

Brendan opened his eyes. It was extraordinary, the civilised behaviour of the middle classes. If he'd walked in on Stephen with some other guy in his bed, he wouldn't have started with a conversation.

"To be honest, I was hoping for a bit of a lie-in." Brendan sat up. "But if you're gonna have a domestic..."

"Brendan, tell him will you?" Macca couldn't believe that Brendan seemed to find this funny, although that was better than getting his anger up. "Tell him there's nothing going on."

"Going on? What – is that what he thinks?"

"I am here, you know," Liam said.

Brendan's erection had subsided, so he got out of bed. In the past he might have felt at a disadvantage, wearing only his boxers and facing someone who was dressed and had the upper hand. He remembered how exposed he'd felt once, scrambling into his trousers as Eileen looked at him with disgust, and as Stephen looked at him willing Brendan to do right by him, and already knowing, like Brendan knew, that he would let him down. Not now though. Brendan didn't feel exposed now or disadvantaged, because he knew that his body was formidable, and he knew he had nothing of value to lose.

"Liam." Brendan walked around the bed and stood in front of him. "I'm offended by what you're implying – unless I'm misunderstanding. Am I misunderstanding?"

"I'm not implying, I'm saying. I've come round to see my boyfriend and found you in bed with him, so from where I'm standing, you're not the one who's got the right to act offended."

"I'm his _uncle._ You don't think I oughta be offended when someone thinks I'm..? It's disgusting, what you're implying." He spoke into Liam's face, barely above a whisper. "_Disgusting_."

Liam stood his ground.

"So, you're telling me you're not gay?"

"No. No, Liam, I'm telling you I ain't fucking my nephew."

Macca watched as the two men stared at each other. Brendan's righteous indignation was quite something to behold. Macca knew he wouldn't back down, and prayed that Liam would.

His prayer was answered.

"Okay maybe... maybe I overreacted, jumped to conclusions. It was just a bit of a..." Liam shuffled awkwardly.

"I accept your apology. Now, seeing as I ain't getting any more beauty sleep, I'm gonna take a shower." Brendan waited for Liam to step out of the doorway to let him pass. "I'll leave you two lovebirds to kiss and make up."

Hilarious.

:::::::

Liam had gone by the time Brendan came out of the bathroom. Brendan had heard raised voices as he was drying off, and the slamming of the front door. He went to the bedroom to get dressed, and then found Macca in the front room, noisily turning the pages of a newspaper and clearly not reading a word of it.

"I'll make a cup of coffee will I?" Brendan said.

Macca ignored him.

Brendan went and put the kettle on. Always the fucking bad guy: how did it always work out like that?

He made two cups of coffee, and hesitated when he was about to put the milk in Macca's. How did he take his coffee? Brendan racked his brain trying to remember if he'd ever made him one before, and drew a blank. Fuck. A splash of milk, then; that was how most people drank it, probably. And sugar? Macca was on some sort of health kick with his boyfriend, wasn't he, with brown bread and muesli and shit, so let's say no sugar. Or one? Anyway, not four, not like Stephen: you could stand the spoon up in Stephen's coffee, pretty much, yet his teeth stayed perfectly white and your hands practically met around his waist, and he'd hold his cup in both hands and blow on it to cool it down, and you wouldn't think anything would cool down in his hands.

Splash of milk, one sugar.

Brendan took the coffees in and put one down in front of Macca.

"Here."

"Thanks."

The boy was grudging and surly. Brendan seemed to collect lads like that – or maybe he made them like that. Whatever.

"Lovers' tiff, I take it."

"What do you think?" Macca snapped.

Insolent little bugger.

"Fucksake, Macca. This is my fault, how?"

"You were in my bed!"

"You knew I was in it when you got in. I didn't see your scruples kick in then. Not til Mister Perfect walked in..."

"Yeah well, I didn't fancy sleeping on the sofa, did I." He felt himself flush: Brendan was right, wasn't he? Macca had known what he was doing when he got into bed with him, and maybe even hoped...

"Gotta say, Macca, you got some trust issues going on there with your _partner._ If you don't mind me saying."

"Ha ha." Macca sipped his coffee: it was just how he liked it, and he wondered how Brendan knew. Maybe he'd taken notice sometimes, back when they were together, of how Macca made it himself. It was good that he remembered. Must mean something, mustn't it?

"Only saying," Brendan said.

"Well don't." Macca paused. "What you said to Liam, Brendan... You know, that if we... that it was disgusting. Is that what you really think?"

Was that what this mood was about? Not that he'd had a bust-up with Liam, but that he'd had his romantic notions of his time with Brendan insulted? Fucksake, what did he think it had been, hearts and flowers?

"Jesus, Macca, I got Liam off your back didn't I? You should be thanking me."

"So that's why you said it? So Liam would stop thinking we..?"

"Yeah." Christ, this was tiring.

"And when we were together, you don't really think it was disgusting?" Macca held his breath. Pushing Brendan like this was never a good idea, but he had to risk it, he had to know how Brendan looked back on that time.

Fucking hell, Macca was worse than a woman. Brendan could feel his temper beginning to fray, and the urge to shut the boy up was becoming hard to contain. But there were things Macca knew that didn't need spreading around, once Brendan was gone from here and not on hand to keep him under control: the gory details of their affair, and what Brendan had done to him in England a year and a bit ago. He had often wondered what it would take to end Macca's unaccountable willingness to keep those secrets, and maybe this would be the tipping point. Better not take the chance. Brendan was only here for a few more hours: he could surely keep the boy sweet for that long.

"Brendan?" It was frustrating seeing Brendan drift off like that, in the middle of a conversation. This _mattered_. Macca repeated his question. "Do you think we... what we did... was disgusting?"

Brendan stood over Macca and ruffled his hair.

"Only when we did it right," he said, with a raise of his eyebrow, and registered a look of relief and a kind of warmth on Macca's face.

Job done. He picked up his jacket and headed for the door.

"Where you going, Bren?"

"See me kids. Back in a bit."

Macca watched him go, then finished his cup of coffee.

:::::::

Pete was at work when his mobile rang. He reached for it across the piles of papers on his desk, intending to reject the call. Whoever it was, they ought to know that he didn't have time to talk during the school day. He glanced at the phone's screen, and what he read there was unexpected: _Amy Barnes calling._

He answered.

"Amy? This is a surprise."

"No, it's not Amy, sorry. It's me, it's Ste."

"Ste? Everything okay, mate? Amy's alright I hope."

"Oh yeah, no, she's fine, she just let me lend her phone cos I haven't got your number in my one."

Pete guessed then, why Ste had called.

"So this is about Brendan, I take it?"

There was a pause, and then Ste's words came in a rush.

"Yeah. Um, I know Cheryl asked you before, and Lynsey did, but I was wondering... you haven't had any news, have you, since them two asked you? Only, Cheryl, she's dead worried, and she's phoned their Eileen like, a million times and she still hasn't heard from him, so I just thought I better ask you again, you know, just in case..."

When they'd parted yesterday morning, Brendan had told Pete he didn't want him telling Eileen that he'd seen him: _Not her, and not anyone else either. I'll do it in my own time._ Pete hadn't promised him, though. _I won't ring her, but if she calls me again I'm not lying for you, Brendan_, he'd told him._ Lynsey and Cheryl too. I'm done with that. _But now that it came to it, Pete found that old habits died hard. They'd never grassed on each other, back when they were kids and got questioned separately about something they'd both done. He'd never told the truth after the crash, that there'd been drink involved; so when Brendan had walked into a police station after a couple of days on the missing list, saying all he could remember was skidding on the wet road, they'd had no choice but to accept he'd been shocked into running away by the sight of Pete's broken body in the wreckage.

Pete hadn't given Warren Fox the information he'd angled for either, to use against Brendan, even though he'd wanted his own revenge at that time and Warren could have helped him get it. Sure, Cheryl had heard some things from Pete that it wasn't his place to say, but in the end it had been better for Brendan that she knew. But no: he wasn't going to betray Brendan's trust now, and break the habit of a lifetime. In any case, it would only be a few more days at most until Brendan went home, so Ste and the rest would find out soon enough that he was okay, without needing to hear it from Pete.

"I'm sorry, Ste. I wish I could help."

"Oh." Ste's voice was small. "Right, well, thanks anyway. Sorry to bother you."

"It's no bother, mate." Pete felt guilty. "Look, I'm sure... I'm sure there's no need to worry. Brendan's a big boy, you know? I bet you he'll turn up like he's never been away."

"You really think so?"

"Yeah, course. Probably just needed time to himself, get his head straight, but he'll be back. He's not gonna just let his business go, is he?"

"S'pose."

Ste sounded no older than the kids milling around in the corridor outside Pete's office on their way from one lesson to the next.

"Anyway, he'll be missing people, won't he?" Pete said. "He likes to act like he's this lone wolf, does Brendan, but god love him, he's lost without the people he cares about. I bet he hasn't stopped thinking about Chez, and Lynsey, and you."

"Me?"

"Reckon so, aye."

"But we haven't... we're not..."

"That won't matter to Bren though, will it? Won't stop him thinking about you." Pete had seen the way Brendan was when he spoke about Ste: never mind how he tried to deny it, the guy was in love.

There was a long pause before Ste spoke again.

"I just... I just want to talk to him. Cos I know what it's like, don't I. Well, a bit – I know it's not the same, Young Offenders, but I think... I think I could help."

There was a knock on Pete's office door, and the deputy head walked in.

"Sorry, Ste, I've got to go, I've got a meeting. Just try not to worry, okay?"

"Okay. Thanks, thanks for... you know." Ste sounded as if he might cry.

Not for the first time, Pete wondered what it was about Brendan. There was Macca, forgiving him enough to let him stay when he needed a place to go. Ste, not giving up on him in spite of everything, his voice fractured with concern. And Pete himself: well, he'd seen the best and worst of Brendan, a lifetime of it; and he'd known Brendan's dad; and he'd seen Brendan's struggle. Maybe he was the only one who saw the whole picture, and understood what made Brendan the way he was, maybe even more than Brendan understood it himself. They were blood brothers.

He would phone Brendan later, after work, and let him know that he had some hope to go back to.

:::::::

Brendan headed back to Macca's around lunchtime. He'd gone to the cafe to catch a last glimpse of his sons walking by on their way to school: they seemed to get taller, the pair of them, every bloody time he saw them. And they looked _happy_. That was good, wasn't it, that they knew how to be happy, that he hadn't fucked them up so badly with his absences and his genes that he'd made them miserable. They were happy without him, which had to be a good thing – that those boys weren't the ones who were hurting.

Then he'd gone and booked a ticket for the night crossing to Liverpool. Unlike on the trip over here – less than three weeks ago, felt like longer – he paid out for a cabin, so at least he'd stand a chance of getting a night's sleep before facing whatever, and whoever, was waiting for him at home.

_Home._ There was that word again in his head, as if that place in England had more of a hold on him than his roots, his past, the place where his children lived. Home was with Cheryl, that must be it. She must be what the ache inside him was about.

With his ferry passage booked, he'd gone for a walk around the streets of the city, drawn to his old haunts but alert for familiar faces he might want to avoid.

And now he was back outside Macca's. As he got to the street door leading up to the flats, it opened, and Liam came out. Poor fucker looked chastened when he saw Brendan.

"Sorry I kicked off earlier, Brendan. No hard feelings?"

"None whatsoever." Brendan could afford to be magnanimous, if only for the pleasure of making Liam feel even more of a heel.

The two men shook hands, and Brendan went inside, but Liam called him back before he shut the door.

"It's just, I don't know if you've ever gone out with someone younger, Brendan, but... I thought I had the advantages, you know? The money, the career, the experience, whatever, but what he's got – _youth_, you know? – beats all that, hands down. I guess I'm just waiting for him to figure it out for himself."

Okay. Not interested.

"I'd better..." Brendan made a move to shut the door.

"Yeah, sorry, I'm rambling. Anyways. It was good meeting you, Brendan: Macca always speaks well of you."

Jesus.

"He's a good kid." Brendan felt awkward now. "Take care of him, Liam, yeah?"

"Do my best."

Brendan closed the door, went up the stairs, and let himself into Macca's flat.

"Bren," Macca greeted him, "You just missed Liam. He came back to sort things out, you know, after this morning."

"Yeah?" Brendan hung up his leather jacket. "Got anything to eat? Me stomach thinks me throat's been cut."

:::::::

Once he found out that Brendan wouldn't be leaving until the evening, Macca told him it was his day off, then took his phone into the bathroom and quietly called his work to say he wasn't well and couldn't come in. Well, it might be the last time he would ever spend with Brendan. You never knew with him, but it was pretty obvious his heart was in England now.

Macca went out to get pizzas like he'd done the day Brendan had turned up on his doorstep, and they ate them with a beer. Brendan went for a sleep after that.

When he woke up, he packed his bags.

He still had time to kill, so they sat and watched a film, although Brendan's head was too full to take it in, too full of what tomorrow might bring. How would Cheryl react, seeing him again? She'd be mad at him, wouldn't she, for his disappearing act, but she would forgive him. Warren Fox was the one he had to worry about, but at least Brendan would have the element of surprise on his side, which would give him the advantage while he got the lie of the land. It wasn't the thought of Foxy that was making his stomach churn though, it was –

His phone rang.

It was Eileen. Fuck. He couldn't deal with her, not now. He would call her when he was back in England, grovel a bit, sort something out about seeing the kids. He rejected the call, and switched off the mobile.

"Here," he said to Macca, "You might as well have this back, son, I'll be getting me own one back soon, won't I."

"Keep it if you like, it's only a spare."

"No, it's yours, you might want it." Brendan wouldn't be calling anybody. "Cheers though."

Macca took the phone, and slung it back in the drawer.

:::::::

It had been a busy day at school, followed by a governors' meeting, so it was into the evening by the time Pete got home, and he was glad to have some time to himself at last. He got out his mobile. He had two numbers for Brendan now: his usual one, and the one for the phone that Brendan had used when he'd called him out of the blue a couple of days ago. He selected _Brendan (new)._ It went straight to voicemail, and he left a message.

"Bren, hi, it's Pete. Just wanted you let you know, I got a call from your Ste this morning. I know you said to me you reckon he hates you, but I gotta tell you, that's not what it sounded like to me. He cares about you, you big ugly bastard, so... well, I guess that's all I wanted to say. Just, you know, I think you've got something there worth fighting for. So, yeah. Good luck, mate, and stay out of trouble, okay?"


	19. Chapter 19

Note This is the last chapter of 'Out'. Thank you to everyone who's taken the time to read it.

* * *

><p>Time to go.<p>

Macca had called a taxi to take Brendan to the port; the two men stood in the front room and waited.

"Thanks for... you know, putting me up, Macca. It was... I appreciate it, so."

It was true, Brendan was thankful: more than a couple of nights in a B&B and he'd have been climbing the walls with the house rules, and in any case he hadn't had any money when he'd arrived in Belfast, and Macca had helped him out with that, too. He was still puzzled as to why this lad had put himself out for him, because it wasn't as if they'd parted on good terms back in Chester a year ago. A picture came into Brendan's head of that day – a picture of Stephen, kissing Macca – and he remembered how he had felt when he saw them. Jealous. Frightened. Betrayed. Furious. It was almost funny, thinking about it now; all those feelings, like everything was under threat, and yet it was nothing compared with what had happened since. All Macca had done was a bit of light manipulation – wonder who he'd learnt that from – to get Stephen to kiss him to prove a point. He hadn't fucked him. The man who did that came later, and the thought of him, Noah, that crass faithless fallguy, with his hands on Stephen, still had the power to make the bile rise in Brendan's throat. He was long gone, but who was screwing Stephen now? A boy like him wouldn't be short of offers.

So what, though? That was his business.

"No problem." Macca's words brought Brendan back to the present. "You've eaten me out of house and home, mind."

"You okay for money now though, yeah?"

"Yeah, I'm only messing. You paid me back what you borrowed, didn't you. It's fine."

"Okay."

Macca's phone rang.

"Cheers, mate," he said, and hung up. "That's your cab, Brendan. He's outside."

This was it, then. Brendan was going, out of Macca's flat, out of his life forever, probably. He'd thought the same thing before, but this time it really felt like it, because there was something different about Brendan now. The air of defeat that had hung around him when he'd turned up three weeks ago had faded, along with the cuts and bruises on his face, but what was left in its place was a kind of sadness. Even when he'd got angry, or sarcastic, or decided to be funny, something was gone from the core of him that used to be there, or maybe something had grown where once there was nothing. Either way, he was being drawn back to England, and Macca couldn't imagine that Brendan would turn to him again. The fact of it hit him like a punch.

No sentimental departure. Brendan had made that mistake before, when he left Macca at the end of their affair: he'd bedded him one last time, the boy's face swollen from a backhander he'd earned by telling Brendan he loved him. Should have left then, after that last angry fuck, but he'd gone back to finish it a better way – god alone knew why: guilt, maybe – on his way to the ferry. Went back to Macca's flat, found him drunk and sleeping; held him, said goodbye, woke him up just enough for him to remember: and that was the mistake, because it had fuelled whatever fucked-up fantasy the kid had in his head, enough for him to think it was a good idea to follow Brendan to England.

Best not make the same mistake again. Brendan held out his hand.

They were shaking hands, were they? After everything they'd... Macca felt tears forming, and hated himself for it, and tried to blink them away.

Jesus. The boy looked distraught all of a sudden. Brendan's hand dropped to his side. Fuck. What was he meant to say?

"You alright?"

Macca nodded.

"Aye, just..." He attempted a smile. "Hate goodbyes, don't I."

"Come on, son, been cramping your style, ain't I. You'll be glad to see the back of me."

"Liam will, that's for sure."

"Yeah, don't think he took to me. Maybe it's the beard."

"Yeah, that must be it."

Down in the street, the taxi hooted.

"I better head, Macca."

Macca looked up at Brendan and took a step towards him, but stopped dead when he saw in him the change in energy which he'd learnt long ago meant danger.

"I'm sorry, Bren, I wasn't gonna – "

There was a look in Macca's eyes – of terror and trying to hide it, of disappointment, of damage and resilience – that propelled Brendan into other times, other places, with another man, and for a moment he didn't know if he was going to throw Macca across the room or –

He pulled Macca roughly into his arms and held him there, just for a moment. Then he picked up his bags and headed down the stairs, calling over his shoulder as he went, "If Liam gives you any bother, tell him I'll batter him."

Macca shut the flat door behind him and leaned against it. Liam wouldn't give him any bother, because he wasn't like that, he knew how to love and how to treat the person he loved. That moment of fear with Brendan had been a sharp reminder.

That door was closed for good.

His eye was caught by an envelope on the coffee table. Brendan had given it to him yesterday, paying back the cash he'd borrowed. Some of it was in euros left over from his trip to the South, he'd said, but it was all there. Macca sat down and unsealed it, and counted the money. The euros amounted to a couple of hundred, and with the rest of it it came to about five hundred pounds more than Brendan had borrowed.

Macca shook his head. Brendan Brady: one of the good guys.

:::::::

He hadn't had a bad night's sleep on the ferry. He'd made inroads into a bottle of Jameson's in his cabin, which had helped him drift off, and the couple of times he'd woken during the night he'd found that looking at the pitch blackness outside the window had been oddly soothing, and sent him back to sleep.

When they docked at Liverpool just after six it was still dark; by the time Brendan found a place to get some breakfast it was beginning to get lighter. He was ravenous, but felt sick. Eating didn't make the feeling in his stomach any better or worse, but it chased his headache away at least.

He couldn't face the hassle and the stop-start of buses or the train, so he found a taxi that would take him all the way home, and shut his eyes in the back of it, and must even have slept because when he opened his eyes he wondered why Stephen wasn't beside him, and realised that he had been dreaming. His dream was of a night a lifetime ago, when he'd gone to a casino with Danny Houston and Jacqui McQueen, and with Stephen; and on the way back the boy had fallen asleep in their taxi, his body heavy as he slumped against Brendan. When Jacqui had opened the door to get out, the light had come on and Brendan had looked at Stephen, and Stephen had looked flawless, uncorrupted. _Beautiful._

Brendan hadn't yet had him then, but already knew he was going to. Maybe it would have been better if he'd paid attention to the warning – because there was a warning, he knew that now – that was fatally fused with the potential that crackled around Stephen like static as he slept. A warning that this time, it wasn't only the boy that would get burnt.

A lifetime ago.

The village was quiet when Brendan got out of the taxi. The place looked almost the same but _felt_ different. Maybe it was the change of season: it had been September last time Brendan left here, driving off in a panic to look for Lynsey, but now the air and the light of December altered the atmosphere in some way.

He stood for a few moments at the bottom of the steps leading up to... _home_, he supposed. He was scared. Fuck. Cheryl and Lynsey had both stood by him, believing he would get out even when he'd thought he wouldn't. They would be glad to see him, but first they'd be angry because he had disappeared on them for these last three weeks.

Man up. He'd faced worse. Brendan ran up the steps, dug his keys out of his holdall; took a breath, and let himself in.

The radio was on, so someone was home. Brendan walked through to his bedroom and dumped his bags on the floor. Someone – Cheryl, most likely – had tidied the room, because everything on the shelves had moved slightly from its usual position. Of course, the place would have been turned over by the police when they searched it. He opened a drawer, and the contents were more orderly than when he'd left them: condom packets tidily stacked; lube lying neatly beside them; a photograph face-up whereas he'd left it face-down. Cheryl had gone mad taking pictures in the club when it first opened, and this one was of Stephen, skinny as fuck in his uniform, with a look on his face half defensive, half shy, _What you want a photo of me for?_

"Brendan?"

He turned around. Lynsey was in the doorway, her mouth open with shock and then turning into a smile as she came and embraced him.

She knew now wasn't the time for a string of questions. Clever girl.

"But you've been okay, Brendan? You're okay now?"

"You know me."

Lynsey nodded.

"If I'd known what was gonna happen to you, Brendan, I'd never have got you involved. I feel so – "

"Hey, you must never think that, okay? Getting involved, it's my job, like if Chez is in trouble. I wish... I wish I'd believed you sooner, Lynsey, that's all, then I coulda stopped it before... If anything happened to you and I coulda stopped it, it'd kill me."

"I know. But it's over, I'm safe now, and you're home, and we can all get on with our lives. That's all that matters. Now why don't you get some rest? I'm off to my counsellor now anyway, and Cheryl's out."

"She alright?"

"Keeping busy. I think that's helped."

"Tidied my room, did she?"

"No, she didn't feel up to it after the police had been in. I did it."

"Cheers." Bad enough that the police had seen the contents of that drawer, never mind this girl who was like a little sister to him.

"No problem." Lynsey glanced from the drawer to Brendan, and tried not to smile.

Brendan found himself shuffling his feet and unable to meet her eyes. How old was he, fourteen?

"Thanks, Lynsey."

"I'll leave you to it."

"Don't tell Cheryl you've seen me, okay? I'll see her when she gets back."

They hugged again, and Lynsey left him alone.

:::::::

There were things he had to do. Scores to settle, plans to make; status to be reclaimed.

His first visit to the club was a short one. He didn't want Warren Fox to hear from someone else that he was back; he wanted to wrongfoot him. Brendan found Warren drinking alone in the upstairs bar. _Champagne, Foxy? You shouldn't have._

Warren wanted answers, but Brendan didn't want a conversation. He walked quickly around the premises inspecting the place. In the office, he spent a few minutes flicking through the books, and it looked as if the business hadn't been doing too badly in his absence.

He studied the rota board, made a mental note of Stephen's shifts so he'd know when not to come in. Jesus, what was that about? Avoiding his own fucking club because he didn't want to run into one of the barmen?

That was what he was thinking about, the first time he saw Cheryl. Brendan was back at home, trying to get things in order in his head. Warren had looked as if he owned the club when Brendan had seen him. He'd been startled to see Brendan, but still he looked comfortable, like it was his domain. A stop had to be put to that. Brendan didn't know how yet, but it would fall into place, he was confident of that. Schemes were what he did, what he'd always done, and he would come up with one that would get rid of Foxy for good, because he had it coming.

So it must be something else that was making him feel off balance. And of course, it was Stephen. The prospect of seeing him was _frightening_. Christ. It wasn't as if the boy had any power: he was an employee, that was all he was now. Everything they'd done was history, there was no getting past the fact that Stephen had thought Brendan killed those girls – even if either of them even wanted to get past it – and in any case Brendan was toxic for him, always had been. Never mind that the months since he'd seen him hadn't dislodged Stephen from his place in Brendan's head: he'd made the decision in prison that he would be better off without that boy, and he was going to stick to it. So why the fear of meeting him again?

It was when Cheryl walked in and Brendan held on to her as if he never wanted to let her go, that he worked out what he was afraid of. He was afraid of what he would _feel_. Feelings made you weak.

:::::::

Cheryl had some interesting information about what had gone on in his absence. Turned out, Warren had a son, some lad who'd turned up out of the blue. Could be useful: Mitzeee and this lad, a pair of Achilles heels. And when Brendan saw the kid – tall, good looking, just eighteen – it was irresistible. A few little comments to Foxy to get under his skin, freak him out, give him nightmares he never knew he could have. Ask him if he'd told his son about the birds and the bees, put the thought of sex in his head, the thought of his boy being the object of it. Let him walk in on you staring at him. Say how the name rolls off the tongue: _Joel_. Let Warren's imagination do the rest. Let his feelings make him weak.

:::::::

Next day, Cheryl told Brendan to take it easy, stay off work.

"Although Ste will be in today, so you could pop in and say hi."

"Why would I wanna do that?" Why would Chez even suggest it?

She was gone by the time Brendan formulated the question: _Are you saying that he would want to see me?_

Wouldn't have asked it anyway.

:::::::

Brendan had had breakfast but he was still hungry. He was always fucking hungry, ever since he got out and got to eat proper food again, not mass-catered crap. He wandered into the kitchen; there was a dish there with a load of sweets in it. He dug in, and picked out a lollipop. Cherry flavour. That would do for now.

Coming down the steps from the flat, he spotted Warren and his kid heading off from the club. Better follow, do a bit of needling, a bit of digging.

Someone walked into him, and had a go at him like it was his fault, stroppy as all fuck.

"You wanna watch what you're – " Stephen said, then the wind went out of his sails. "Brendan... I heard that you were back."

Focus. Focus on the Foxes and on keeping tabs on where they were going. Don't focus on Stephen, real and vivid in front of you, his hair soft and thick at the top of his head like you had to comb your fingers through it; his eyes on you, intense, and looking... what? Concerned, was it? His voice kind of hesitant, same as his body language, like he was holding back. Like he was holding himself back.

Brendan threw him a smart comment and tried to walk away, but Stephen stopped him. How, though? He didn't grab him to keep him there – he'd be a fool to try a move like that. He just... stopped him.

More _concern_ from Stephen. More smart remarks back at him. He wasn't getting away with this, turning it around, making out he cared. If he thought his betrayal was forgotten, he'd got another think coming.

"D'you know what it's like to lose all hope? That even those closest to you had their doubts? Every day my life flashed before me, and you know the one image I kept seeing, over and over?"

"No."

_You. Your face, in my hands. Your body in my bed. You, wanting me, giving yourself to me. You, taking yourself from me. You. Always, always you._

"You've gotten taller. Maybe it's just me." Brendan shoved the lollipop into Stephen's mouth, because the only other options were to kiss him or to kill him. "This has been fun. See ya."

Focus on those two in the distance, Warren and his son. Anything but this, these feelings. Because feelings – _these_ feelings – make you weak.

:::::::

It was the middle of the afternoon when Brendan headed home again, and already the light was beginning to fade.

Near the bottom of the steps, something caught his eye, a small red object lying in the gutter. He stopped, looked down. Crouched and picked it up. It was that lollipop: Stephen must have thrown it away as soon as Brendan walked off.

He could have kept it.

:::::::

Brendan had expected that being back in his own bed would have made his sleep more restful. He'd pinned his hopes on it, because he didn't know what else would put an end to the thoughts that rushed in on him and the dreams that left him tired out and anxious when he woke; but these couple of nights since he'd got home hadn't been much better.

How had he got here? That was what he lay awake puzzling over. Not the dealing and the feuding and the making a living in the shadows; all of that just was what it was. But the rest of it, all the lies he told, even to his own sister; abandoning his kids and throwing money at them as if that would make it better; turning someone who'd once said he loved him into someone who could believe he was a serial killer.

What was it Peter had said a few days ago in Belfast? _Sure, you'll deal with Warren, you'll talk about Warren, but the rest of it, the stuff that matters? You run, don't you? Every single time._ He was right, and Brendan wasn't going to do that any more. What he was going to do instead was, he was going to build higher walls, and the people he had to protect would be inside with him, but nobody else would get near because he couldn't risk it. He would look after Declan and Padraig, because that's what a father was meant to do, wasn't it? And he would keep Cheryl safe, and Lynsey, because he'd always tried to ever since the two of them were little girls, and harm coming to either one of them was unthinkable. But as for anyone else, he'd found out that if they forced their way in, they changed you in ways you'd never imagined, and it hurt. It hurt.

They? _He._

Stephen was still there when Brendan closed his eyes, his image more solid than it had been in the months he'd been away, now that he'd seen him again. He'd looked good. Jesus, he'd never looked better, and Brendan remembered the pores in his skin, and the bits of stubble that he'd missed with his razor, and his dark eyelashes and his heavy brows giving a shadow to his eyes so you couldn't quite read what was in them. It was easy – so easy – to think that he'd be here in the bed if you opened your eyes and turned your head. He'd be sleeping, and you'd blow on his face to wake him, and he'd be irritated, so you'd say sorry even though you weren't, and he'd smile and you'd kiss the smile, and you'd taste him, and you could remember the taste of him even though it was four months since you'd been with him. And his hands would be all over you, stroking, scratching, demanding, and you'd be on him and in him, and his body would tighten around you and claim you as much as you were claiming him. And it wouldn't matter if he stayed, and it wouldn't matter if someone saw him when he left, because you were _out_ now to anyone that mattered, and could give him what he'd wanted all along.

Fuck. The walls could go as high as they liked and it would make no difference. Stephen was still on the inside, where he'd always been.


End file.
